William Deresiewicz
All Books By William Deresiewicz
A Jane Austen Education
- By: William Deresiewicz
- Narrator: Sean Pratt
- Length: 7 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
An eloquent memoir of a young man’s life transformed by literature.
In A Jane Austen Education, Austen scholar William Deresiewicz turns to the author’s novels to reveal the remarkable life lessons hidden within. With humor and candor, Deresiewicz employs his own experiences to demonstrate the enduring power of Austen’s teachings. Progressing from his days as an immature student to a happily married man, Deresiewicz’s A Jane Austen Education is the story of one man’s discovery of the world outside himself.
A self-styled intellectual rebel dedicated to writers such as James Joyce and Joseph Conrad, Deresiewicz never thought Austen’s novels would have anything to offer him. But when he was assigned to read Emma as a graduate student at Columbia, something extraordinary happened. Austen’s devotion to the everyday, and her belief in the value of ordinary lives, ignited something in Deresiewicz. He began viewing the world through Austen’s eyes and treating those around him as generously as Austen treated her characters. Along the way, Deresiewicz was amazed to discover that the people in his life developed the depth and richness of literary characters-that his own life had suddenly acquired all the fascination of a novel. His real education had finally begun.
Weaving his own story-and Austen’s-around the ones her novels tell, Deresiewicz shows how her books are both about education and themselves an education. Her heroines learn about friendship and feeling, staying young and being good, and, of course, love. As they grow up, they learn lessons that are imparted to Austen’s reader, who learns and grows by their sides.
A Jane Austen Education is a testament to the transformative power of literature, a celebration of Austen’s mastery, and a joy to read. Whether for a newcomer to Austen or a lifelong devotee, Deresiewicz brings fresh insights to the novelist and her beloved works. Ultimately, Austen’s world becomes indelibly entwined with our own, showing the relevance of her message and the triumph of her vision.
... Read moreExcellent Sheep
- By: William Deresiewicz
- Length: 8 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
- Publish date: August 19, 2014
- Language: English
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3.88(6156 ratings)
As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.
Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who’s interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.
The Death of the Artist
- By: William Deresiewicz
- Narrator: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 13 hours 55 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: July 28, 2020
- Language: English
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4.01(248 ratings)
A deeply researched warning about how the digital economy threatens artists’ lives and work–the music, writing, and visual art that sustain our souls and societies–from an award-winning essayist and critic
There are two stories you hear about earning a living as an artist in the digital age. One comes from Silicon Valley. There’s never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you’ve got a laptop, you’ve got a recording studio. If you’ve got an iPhone, you’ve got a movie camera. And if production is cheap, distribution is free: it’s called the Internet. Everyone’s an artist; just tap your creativity and put your stuff out there.
The other comes from artists themselves. Sure, it goes, you can put your stuff out there, but who’s going to pay you for it? Everyone is not an artist. Making art takes years of dedication, and that requires a means of support. If things don’t change, a lot of art will cease to be sustainable.
So which account is true? Since people are still making a living as artists today, how are they managing to do it? William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions. Based on interviews with artists of all kinds, The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. If artists were artisans in the Renaissance, bohemians in the nineteenth century, and professionals in the twentieth, a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
The End of Solitude
- By: William Deresiewicz
- Length: 12 hours 57 minutes
- Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
- Publish date: August 23, 2022
- Language: English
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3.94(80 ratings)
What is the Internet doing to us? What is college for? What are the myths and metaphors we live by? What is the purpose of art, and what can we learn from the past?
These are the questions that William Deresiewicz has been pursuing over the course of his award-winning career. In “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” his viral piece from 2008, he sounded the alarm about the Ivy League admissions frenzy and the kind of student it produces. In “Solitude and Leadership,” his 2009 address at West Point he issued an early warning about the threats from social media to our inner lives. In “On Political Correctness,” from 2017, he dissected the culture of ideological intolerance that has spread, since then, from campus to society at large.
The End of Solitude brings together these and more than forty other essays from such publications as Harper’s and the Atlantic and introduces four that are published here for the first time. Drawing on the past, they ask how we got where we are. Scrutinizing the present, they seek to understand how we can live more mindfully, more meaningfully, more freely. Behind their questions lies a fundamental one: What does it mean to be an individual, and how can we sustain our individuality in an age of networks and groups?