A bracingly honest study of Shakespeare’s scholar-heroes designed to get the modern scholar back into public life.
Knowing thyself.
This elegant, brief book explores the figure of the scholar in selected Shakespeare plays to argue that those plays can teach us how to know ourselves. A professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Keilen seeks a personal, humane approach to literature—a view that works of verbal art not only tell us about their own time but teach something about the present. In Love’s Labor’s Lost, Hamlet, and The Tempest, Keilen finds the scholar-hero in dilemmas comic and tragic. How did a playwright who, by all accounts, did not have more than a grammar school training, characterize the rising class of university wits, philosophers, and political advisers? For all his college learning, Hamlet remains indecisive. For all his bookish skill, Prospero fails at governance. And in Love’s Labor’s Lost, perhaps Shakespeare’s wordiest and in-joke-ridden play, Keilen finds the fissures that beset all academic life. There, men seek not to embrace the world but, rather, to exclude society. Each of these plays becomes an allegory of failed academia: a lesson for the modern professor who forgets a debt to public life. This is a book of provocation. The author writes, “There is no greater temptation for scholars than to imagine that our profession makes us special, set apart from other people and the sphere of common life.” And this: “Like everybody else, Shakespeare scholars must figure out how to live in societies where broken promises and betrayals of trust are as common as the air we breathe.” Keilen chose to focus on three plays with broken promises and betrayals. They are tales of wisdom learned too late. His book’s goal is to teach us to be humble, self-knowing, and generous before it is too late for us.
A bracingly honest study of Shakespeare’s scholar-heroes designed to get the modern scholar back into public life.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9780691272634
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.
A former NFL player casts his gimlet eye on American race relations.
In his first book, Acho, an analyst for Fox Sports who grew up in Dallas as the son of Nigerian immigrants, addresses White readers who have sent him questions about Black history and culture. “My childhood,” he writes, “was one big study abroad in white culture—followed by studying abroad in black culture during college and then during my years in the NFL, which I spent on teams with 80-90 percent black players, each of whom had his own experience of being a person of color in America. Now, I’m fluent in both cultures: black and white.” While the author avoids condescending to readers who already acknowledge their White privilege or understand why it’s unacceptable to use the N-word, he’s also attuned to the sensitive nature of the topic. As such, he has created “a place where questions you may have been afraid to ask get answered.” Acho has a deft touch and a historian’s knack for marshaling facts. He packs a lot into his concise narrative, from an incisive historical breakdown of American racial unrest and violence to the ways of cultural appropriation: Your friend respecting and appreciating Black arts and culture? OK. Kim Kardashian showing off her braids and attributing her sense of style to Bo Derek? Not so much. Within larger chapters, the text, which originated with the author’s online video series with the same title, is neatly organized under helpful headings: “Let’s rewind,” “Let’s get uncomfortable,” “Talk it, walk it.” Acho can be funny, but that’s not his goal—nor is he pedaling gotcha zingers or pleas for headlines. The author delivers exactly what he promises in the title, tackling difficult topics with the depth of an engaged cultural thinker and the style of an experienced wordsmith. Throughout, Acho is a friendly guide, seeking to sow understanding even if it means risking just a little discord.
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-80046-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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