Words do make things happen. But they cannot be counted on to produce the result they intend. This volume studies examples from a range of speakers and writers and offers close readings of their words.

That is the integration that David Bromwich seeks to attain in these essays as he shrewdly and eloquently gazes upon the past and present of American politics, the speeches and actions of figures ranging from Burke through Lincoln to King ...

In American Breakdown, David Bromwich provides an essential analysis of the forces in play beneath the surface of our political system.

David Bromwich reads Burke’s career as an imperfect attempt to organize an honorable life in the dense medium he knew politics to be.

In this eloquent book a distinguished scholar criticizes attacks on liberal education by ideologies of the right and left, arguing that both groups see education as a means to indoctrinate students in specific cultural and political dogmas.

A tribute to the traditional verse form compiles 180 varied works by approximately 120 poets including Longfellow, Poe, and Frost, in a volume that offers insight into the sonnets reflection of emotion and inspiration.

In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers ...

Skeptical Music collects the essays on poetry that have made David Bromwich one of the most widely admired critics now writing.

PrefaceIntroduction 1: Alienation and Belonging to Humanity 2: Political Justice in The Borderers 3: The French Revolution and "Tintern Abbey" 4: Moral Relations in the Preface and Two Ballads 5: The Trial of Individuality 6: Historical ...

For the last two centuries, literature has tested the authority of the individual and the community. With a historical as well as an interpretative emphasis, Bromwich explores this tension.