Library Without Walls

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

December 24, 2012

A Duckburg Holiday

Essay by Michael Dirda

How Carl Barks made Uncle Scrooge McDuck the center of a magical, web-footed world.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

October 26, 2012

Religio Medici and Urne-Burial

By SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Reviewed by Michael Dirda

The haunting imagination and musical prose of a seventeenth-century physician.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

August 10, 2012

Mediterranean Breeze

Essay by Michael Dirda

Norman Douglas's classic novel of an Italian island makes for hilarious and "utterly pagan" beach reading.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

July 6, 2012

Diamond in the Roughneck: The Books of Harry Crews

By Michael Dirda

The lasting impact of a writer committed to the "jagged edges" of the soul.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

May 18, 2012

Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights

By MARINA WARNER

Reviewed by Michael Dirda

How the stories of Scheherazade invented fantasy.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

March 9, 2012

A Dreamer of Mars: Edgar Rice Burroughs and John Carter

By Michael Dirda

How a failed salesman became a titan of planetary romance.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

February 7, 2012

"We Revel in a Crowd of Any Kind": Dickens the Journalist

By Michael Dirda

The great novelist, in love with the life of the streets.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

October 10, 2011

Arabian Sands

By WILFRED THESIGER

Essay by Michael Dirda

A classic epic of endurance is also a testament to the beauty and hardship of desert life.

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LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS

August 31, 2011

When the World Spoke French

By MARC FUMAROLI, translated by RICHARD HOWARD

Reviewed by Michael Dirda

A captivating history of an era in which the gaze of the world was fixed on Paris.

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library without walls

August 10, 2010

James Lees-Milne

Essay by Michael Dirda

The life, times, and seductions of James Lees-Milne (1908-1997), England's greatest 20th-century diarist.

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library without walls

May 7, 2010

A Reader on Reading

By ALBERTO MANGUEL

Essay by Michael Dirda

A collection of essays on a reading life from the author of A History of Reading and The Library at Night

About the Columnist

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World. He is the author of the memoir An Open Book and several collections of essays. His most recent book is Classics for Pleasure.

Daybook

May 18: Parade, the "first modern ballet," premiered in Paris on this day in 1917. The production was a collaboration of some of modernism's most famous -- music by Erik Satie, scenario by Jean Cocteau, costumes by Picasso,…

Previously in Daybook

In the Margin

Ethan Rutherford and Matt Burgess (Dogfight: A Love Story) on the writing of Rutherford's surreal and fiercely funny story collection The Peripatetic Coffin.

Earlier Posts

The Long List

Books, CDs, DVDs to know about now

My Struggle, Book Two

A controversial sensation in Norway, A Man in Love is the second book of six in the series, detailing Knausgaard’s separation from his wife, his move to Stolkholm and the dogged pursuit of a mesmerizing poet.

Minotaur

This newly reissued Cold War classic profiles an Israeli spy obsessed with an English girl half his age, and his attempts to win her love without ever revealing his true identity.

The Innocence Game

Three Chicago journalism students attend an “innocence” seminar that will teach them how to release the wrongfully accused from prison. But as innocents are jailed, a killer roams free, and the students are next on the hit list.