In Waiting for the Barbarians, Daniel Mendelsohn����onsidered by some to be one of the greatest critics of our time��(Poets & Writers)��rings together twenty-four of his
recent essays on a dazzlingly broad range of subjects from Avatar to Stendhal and from the Titanic to Susan Sontag. In this collection, Mendelsohn moves from penetrating
considerations of the ways in which the classics continue to make themselves felt in contemporary life and letters (Anne Carson�� translations of Sappho, Greek myth in Spider-Man) to
trenchant takes on pop spectacles��one more controversial than his ��rilliant��essay on Mad Men, Tina Brown�� first choice for NPR�� Must Reads. Also gathered here are essays
devoted to the art of fiction, from Jonathan Littell�� blockbuster The Kindly Ones to forgotten gems like the novels of Theodor Fontane. In a final section, ��rivate Lives,��prefaced by
his major New Yorker essay on phony memoirs, Mendelsohn considers the lives and work of authors as disparate as Sontag, No禱l Coward, and Jonathan Franzen.
