Blending elements of personal history and social commentary, a classical scholar and critic explores the meaning of passion and the mysteries of sexual identity and homosexuality, as he ranges from the ancient works of Sappho, Ovid, and Catullus to the cultural icons and institutions of the modern day. Reprint. 17,500 first printing. (view table of contents)

Whether he's on Broadway or at the movies, considering a new bestseller or revisiting a literary classic, Daniel Mendelsohn's judgments over the past fifteen years have provoked and dazzled with their deep erudition, disarming emotionality, and tart wit. Now How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken reveals all at once the enormous stature of Mendelsohn's achievement and demonstrates why he is considered one of our greatest critics. Writing with a lively intelligence and arresting originality, he brings his distinctive combination of scholarly rigor and conversational ease to bear across eras, cultures, and genres, from Roman games to video games.His interpretations of our most talked-about films—from the work of Pedro Almodóvar to Brokeback Mountain, from United 93 and World Trade Center to 300, Marie Antoinette, and The Hours—have sparked debate and changed the way we watch movies. Just as stunning and influential are his dispatches on theater and literature, from The Producers to Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, from The Lovely Bones to the works of Harold Pinter. Together these thirty brilliant and engaging essays passionately articulate the themes that have made Daniel Mendelsohn a crucial voice in today's cultural conversation: the aesthetic and indeed political dangers of imposing contemporary attitudes on the great classics; the ruinous effect of sentimentality on the national consciousness in the post-9/11 world; the vital importance of the great literature of the past for a meaningful life in the present.How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken makes it clear that no other contemporary thinker is as engaged with as many aspects of our culture and its influences as Mendelsohn is, and no one practices the vanishing art of popular criticism with more acuity, humor, and feeling.

For five years, Daniel Mendelsohn traveled the globe searching for an answer to the question he had first asked as a boy decades earlier: What really happened to his great-uncle's family during the Holocaust? Here, Mendelsohn weaves together his discoveries about the past, family secrets and Judaism itself. He visits nearly a dozen countries on four continents in pursuit of the truth, eventually interviewing the town's twelve living survivors. Along the way, he detects things that challenge family myths and inspire new questions about long-held beliefs. Interwoven throughout the present-day developments are flashbacks to Mendelsohn's youth spent with his immigrant relatives, and more generally to Jewish life, philosophy and tradition over the years. Not only does he come to know his six deceased relatives on this unforgettable journey, but he discovers so much more about himself, his religion, his immediate family and their shared history as well.--From publisher description.The author describes how his family was haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust and how he embarked on a determined search to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his lost ancestors' fates.