How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken : essays

Whether on Broadway or at the movies, considering a new novel or revisiting a classic work of literature, Daniel Mendelsohn's judgments over the past fifteen years have provoked and dazzled with their deep erudition, disarming emotionality, and tart wit.

Now, in "How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken", we see all at once the overwhelming depth and intelligence infused in Mendelsohn's writings, as 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 striking interpretations of our most important films - from the work of Pedro Almodovar to "Brokeback Mountain", "United 93" and "World Trade Center", "300", "Troy", 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 Euripides' "Medea" to "The letters of Truman Capote". "How Beautiful It Is" makes it clear that no other contemporary thinker is as engaged with as many aspects of our culture and its influences as Mendelsohn is.