some other reviews

From The Gadfly at edexcellence.net

While the thought that students should bother with the poetry of the Romantics, the prose of Darwin, the philosophy of Mill, or the speeches of Churchill is anathema to many, even the greatest critics of Western culture must concede that the English language that still unites us (though not as strongly as it should) has never been used more effectively than by those in the land of its birth--England. "The language has been shaped by those who have used it best," write the Ravitches in their introduction to this exquisite anthology. "Everyone who writes in English inherits this legacy, from Chinua Achebe to Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie to Toni Morrison, Derek Wolcott to Seamus Heaney. These great contemporary writers transform the literary tradition in their own distinct ways, but their guideposts are the monumental achievements of English literature." We may choose to deny our students the history of Western civilization, and still survive. But deny our students English literature, and we excise the very font from which the versatility and beauty of the language we speak flows. Diane and Michael have given us the best argument for why English literature should never "go gentle into that good night"--the words of the language's masters themselves.

Seattle Times December 11 2006

"A shortcut to being Lit Savvy. The greatest-hits package is a mix of experts from longer works and complete short pieces (poems, essays, speeches) that distills the eseence of great literature."

Hindu Times, February 7 2007

"This unique collection offers the best that has been thought and said."

Charleston Post & Courier

"The enduring impression is of ideas. Big, serious, complex ideas requiring attention spans not fed on sound bites and 15 second commercials. It's enough to tempt one to buy a booster

A great review!

From Elizabeth I to Churchill: A Literary Survey

By Kent Owen

 

20 January 2007

The Wall Street Journal

 

The English Reader

By Michael Ravitch and Diane Ravitch

Oxford, 486 pages, $30

 

    ANTHOLOGIES of works written in English have been available since at least 1861, when Francis Turner Palgrave published "The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language." Later anthologies have sometimes shown a finicky bent toward including samples from too many sources. This can make for a certain overstuffed amplitude.

 

    So it's a treat to come across a book organized on a different basis -- one that communicates the vitality and richness of the English language instead of the outer limits of too muchness. Diane and Michael Ravitch (mother and son) have arranged a well-curated collection of durable poems, essays, hymns, speeches, folk songs and prose excerpts, beginning with Elizabeth I's "Speech on the Eve of Facing the Spanish Armada" and ending with Winston Churchill's "Speech to the House of Commons, June 18, 1940." In between are 3 1/2 centuries of words and phrases, rhymes and rhythms, measured thoughts and impassioned poetry that, taken as a whole, represent much of the English literary tradition and, moreover, the cultural legacy that is Britain's.

 

    Whether sampling from Shakespeare's sonnets and dramatic speeches, or William Blake's mystical poems, or the lyrics of John Keats, the Ravitches make it their overarching purpose to restore a compelling awareness of the work to our contemporary consciousness. What common readers once knew as a matter of course has come to seem remote or of little interest. It is no small matter that the ways of thinking and feeling that inform the institutions of Western civilization should be regarded with indifference.

But although its aim is mildly didactic, "The English Reader" is by no means an ordinary textbook. In point of fact, it isn't a textbook at all. More than anything else, it serves to entertain, putting at hand the serendipitous pleasures of a good used-book store. (Readers in search of more ambitious and comprehensive anthologies might turn to Harold Bloom's "The Best Poems of the English Language" or John Gross's "The New Oxford Book of English Prose.") The curious browser in "The English Reader" is rewarded with one discovery or reacquaintance after another.

 

    To wit: Robert Louis Stevenson's bracing essay "Aes Triplex"; William Hazlitt's astringent "Man Is a Toad-Eating Animal"; helpings from John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot, Samuel Johnson, G.K. Chesterton, E.M. Forster and George Orwell. We also find British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst delivering a speech in New York City in 1913 and Irish patriot Roger Casement addressing the Old Bailey after his arrest for treason in 1916.

Lest one suppose that everything is weighty with greatness, there is Felicia Hemans's "Casabianca" ("The boy stood on the burning deck / Whence all but he had fled") -- one of the best-recalled and most oft-recited specimens of overwrought poesy in English.

 

    As editors, the Ravitches have brought together many powerful works of literary art. Suitably, their introduction is eloquent and their notes brief, telling and to the point.

 

---

Mr. Owen is a writer in Bloomington, Ind.

A lovely article

This eloquent column from The Minneapolis Star-Tribune discusses some of the issues raised by The English Reader:

Limp Language Leaves Kids with an Awesome Paucity of Speech

By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune

Eavesdrop on any group of teens hanging around outside your local high school. Their emotions may run the gamut, but their ability to express themselves generally does not. They've got one all-purpose word -- "awesome" -- to cover everything from mild approval to exhilaration. When they're indignant or angry, they have to fall back on clichés -- including a few tired four-letter words.

What accounts for this? Some would say that our kids have grown up on a diet of linguistic Wonder Bread.

If the kids asked us to name a verbal model -- a master of words who could craft a truly stinging insult -- whom would we suggest? Donald Trump?

For my money, nobody dissed 'em better than William Shakespeare. The unparalleled master of the English tongue may have lived 400 years ago, but he made name-calling an art. Take the words he put in Prince Henry's mouth in "Henry IV, Part 1": "Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-catch!"

Today, teens aren't the only ones who have lost the ability to speak and write with vigor and eloquence. Folks of all ages are reading less -- especially the classics, whose authors wielded our language most powerfully. As a result, our ability to express ourselves is diminishing, because we can't draw on their example for inspiration.

Last month, Diane Ravitch, an eminent historian of education, provided the perfect antidote: "The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know." In this anthology, she and her son Michael Ravitch have gathered what they regard as the most memorable speeches, poems, essays and songs in the English language.

"Today, our common cultural reference points come from the visual culture: Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez," Ravitch told me last week. Our schools could help remedy the problem, but often don't, she says. That's because "'relevance" is now the watchword in education.

In textbooks, teens tend to find countless stories about young people much like themselves, according to Ravitch.

"How much richer it is to be able to use your imagination -- to communicate with people who lived 200 years ago and come away with something that remains in your head and your heart," she adds.

Norman Fruman, an emeritus English professor at the University of Minnesota, agrees. "Good literature deals with ideas, as well as emotions and the psychology of human behavior," he says. "It records our greatest tragedies and our highest aspirations." During 40 years as a teacher, he saw a steep decline in students' knowledge of their literary heritage.

Students' ignorance impoverishes them in several ways, he says.

Fruman illustrates with an anecdote: Years ago, a quiet young woman who always sat in the back row approached him after a class discussion of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "She told me that Coleridge powerfully expressed her own terrifying experiences of depression. 'The words just jumped off the page,' she confided. 'They were speaking to me and recording my experience.' "

Robert Kennedy also drew solace from the classics. After his brother John's assassination, he memorized lines from the Greek playwright Aeschylus about the wisdom that comes through suffering. Ravitch herself lost a child to leukemia in 1966. She has included the poem that sustained her -- "Oak and Lily," by 17th-century writer Ben Jonson -- in "The English Reader."I still can't read it out loud, it moves me too much," she says.

Language has the power to capture intimate emotions, but it can also move entire nations. "The English Reader" includes "words that changed the world, words that inspired revolutions," Ravitch says.

Fruman uses King Henry's great speech at Agincourt in Shakespeare's "Henry V" as an example. "When I hear it, I want to jump up and follow him into battle," he says. Fruman also recalls hearing Winston Churchill's thrilling words on the radio in 1940: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." It's no accident that the other great Allied leaders of World War II -- Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle -- were also great orators, he adds.

The 2002 New York City ceremony marking the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks suggested that contemporary leaders know they can't match that standard. Speakers read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, recited Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, and quoted from the Declaration of Independence. Not one used his own words.

These speakers were important public figures -- two governors and the mayor of New York City. Apparently, however, they didn't trust themselves to say anything worth remembering.