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.

 

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Mr. Owen is a writer in Bloomington, Ind.