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    T. S. Eliot writes in his introduction that Valery "invented, and was to impose upon his age, ... a new conception of the poet." As described by Valery, the poet is a "cool scientist, almost an algebraist, in the service of a subtle dreamer." Valery focuses his attention on the deliberate formal work that transforms the dream into the poem, in his own poems, as well as in those of La Fontaine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, the Symbolists, Mallarme, Rimbaud, and others.

    Acknowledged as perhaps the masterpiece of materialist criticism in the English language, this omnibus ranges over British literary history from George Eliot to George Orwell to inquire about the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination.

    The resulting chronicle was hailed by the New York Times as "the best reporting that the period of depression has brought forth in the United States," and forms the heart of the present volume. In prose that is by turns dramatic and naturalistic, inflammatory and evocative, satirical and droll, Wilson painted an unforgettable portrait of a time when "the whole structure of American society seemed actually to be going to pieces." The American Earthquake bookends this chronicle with a collection of Wilson's non-literary articles—including criticism, reportage, and some fiction—from the years of "The Follies," 1923–1928, and the dawn of the New Deal, 1932–1934. During this period, Wilson had grown from a little-known journalist to one of the most important American literary and social critics of the century. The American Earthquake amply conveys the astonishing breadth of Wilson's talent, provides an unparalleled vision of one of the most troubling periods in American history, and, perhaps inadvertently, offers a self-portrait comparable to The Education of Henry Adams .

    He offers a detailed study of the major works of fiction, Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kroher, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, Doctor Faustus and Felix Krull, as well as a discussion of Mann's most significant political essay, 'Meditations of a Non-Political Man'. Beyond this, Heller's book is a profound commentary on Mann by a mind attuned to (and mouded by) precisely the intellectual and cultural traditions which are so much part of Mann's creative make-up.