The Literature Student's Survival Kit: What Every Reader Needs to Know

Those of us of a certain age and educated in certain types of establishment all share a common literary and historical culture from our educational experience. I still enjoy the cultural (especially the literary) and educational legacy that has remained with me throughout my life, but I am not so reactionary as to believe that what was relevant to my education necessarily remains so for today's generations. The world is very different in so many ways, and the knowledge needed to make sense of it and to thrive in it must be very different from what I learned many years...