The Literature Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

Very educational and an easy read. I learned a lot.

Detailed and well done. A wealth on information. More text than I expected, not for children. Love their entire series. Awesome

This Literature is my sixth revolutionary DK Big Ideas book after Philosophy, Politics, Economics, Religions, Mathematics. Philosophy I have diligently studied for past 20 years since my retirement as a lecturer (professor) of economics. So in those two disciplines, I expected to be so well current in the subject matter that I could not learn much new, but only check what was included, whatnot. But I was surprised: learned lots of new matters so well presented, above all in a pedagogical sense. Hundreds, maybe thousands of internal cross-linkings make these DK books excellent textbooks, encyclopedias, popular means of enlightenment both for laymen and for professionals. I did not expect that I could digest or understand enough Mathematics, but surprise again. Except only in some cases of really deep-going nutcracker specialties of number theory did I feel me a mere onlooker. Instead found solid foundations of that narrow but important field of mathematics I had learned when lecturing twenty years and learning myself mathematical economics, differential and integral calculus, and dynamics of economic and econometric models. No difficulties in understanding Politics and Religion although only everyday life contact with those matters. I did not expect so neutral and balanced text about such a sentimental subject as religion. Fantastic colorful details. In the end, when telling about my reading experiences, I came to name my three favorite religions, two of which unknown to me before reading DK Religions.So far about other DK-books, all deserving full five stars as my assessment. But what about Literature? I am, after all, an eager reader - and a foolish statistician - having made a list of all over thousand books I have read during the past 55 years, almost 1000 paper books with assessment 1-3 stars, and now more than 200 ebooks with the scale of 1 to 5 stars and more than 130 reviews in pursuit of learning languages, made so easy and pleasant with ebooks. Again, no difficulty of matter-of-fact understanding. The first part, first 500 pages, all known classics spiced with many known by titles, arising desire of acquiring and reading, ok, introducing some principles of division to genre classification. But then, the last part, history since 1900, approximately, in general, of course with many exceptions, did and does not inspire me, dropping my stars to four instead of five. Modernism and post-modernism have not acquired my consent. I have tried some, but have experienced bitter disappointments, even in cases of events of general admiration. Here I find a suitable context of expressing my wide disagreement with the Nobel committee. Starting from Joyce, Gárcia, Llora and others not having at school learned subject-predicate sentences and punctuation. I am also fiercely accusing the Nobel committee for not giving the price to our Mika Waltari for his Sinuhe or the Estonian master Jaan Kross. My favorites are books with a documentary approach to a wide variety of human life, history, science, romance, everyday life. Instead, no scifi, neither war nor violence.These Big Ideas of Literature history, four stars.

Fun to learn with! Easy to read! Wish more educational books were used like this one for college classes!

I found many passages revealing and learned from them. I found many passages dry and it was a grind to get through. I believe that my experiences will be similar in this to yours but with the passages differing. I did enjoy the book despite the grind. Literature is a difficult subject for me to enjoy unless I am passionate about the subject material. While most novels have great ideas those ideas are put into an author’s mental machine and when done in an academic way produce uniformity and structure. While this may be a good thing in architecture, I prefer the more aesthetic novel to literature where ideas are brought to the forefront but also done in a beautiful way. This isn’t to say that there aren’t literary novels that fall under this example; it is simply too few of them do. Literature for the academic may be found intriguing, but, to the general public it will be lost on them; mostly because they read literally. I am sure there is humor in that last note. Anyways great educational source. Do read.

Use product for my edification

Good in Kindle, but far better in print...Just as with most DK books, the print version would seem to be the optimum method to pore through this reference book.That is not to bemoan the quality of the writing and information laced throughout this text, for I found myself really getting pulled into the information regarding the evolution of literature and, more importantly, the entertainment of various societies through the eons.I definitely love reading books and magazines. In fact, I am so devoted to reading that I read the ingredient listings of cereal boxes and the small type that advertisers usually pray people will ignore. But, I do not eschew the other means of information and entertainment pervading modern society - the value and worth of all information, essentially, is preserved by how well it attracts interest and gets consumers to regurgitate it. That is one of the prime benefits extolled in The Literature Book, even though it is not exactly stated in the book.Still, although I do believe the best way to consume the information in this text is by purchasing the print copy, I probably never would have, if I had not first gleaned the content through my free Kindle app.As a result, I'm rating this four stars. I cannot rate it five in Kindle format, simply because it lacks that other dimensional quality - the graphic.

DK books are frustrating because they are so uniformly good--makes me want to toss earlier surveys that I have bought. This one is no exception. Wonderful, well organized summaries that give a grand view of literature, especially Western. So good, I may never get to so many of the primary sources--but for an overview of what is and what makes great literature, could not be better.