Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now

In an age of uncertainty over our literary heritage, Andrew Delbanco reconsiders our greatest writers and how they enlarged our sense of American possibilities and the expressive range of our Language. Whether he writes of Herman Melville or Zora Neale Hurston, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Richard Wright, Delbanco's understanding of their imaginative force is deep and appreciative. "I have no doubt that the world is better for these books having been written, and I believe it is the responsibility of the critic to incite others to read them", he says.