Bloom, the best-known literary critic of our time, shares his extensive knowledge of and profound joy in the works of a constellation of major writers, including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Austen, Dickinson, Melville, Wilde, and O'Connor in this eloquent invitation to readers to read and read well.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A wheeling meditation on the wired life, on privacy, on what being human in the age of binary code might mean” (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Netanyahus NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VULTURE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “Shatteringly powerful . . . I cannot think of anything by anyone in [Cohen’s] generation that is so frighteningly relevant and composed with such continuous eloquence. There are moments in it that seem to transcend our impasse.”—Harold Bloom The enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the world’s most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. The mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication. Insider tech exposé, leaked memoir-in-progress, international thriller, family drama, sex comedy, and biblical allegory, Book of Numbers renders the full range of modern experience both online and off. Embodying the Internet in its language, it finds the humanity underlying the virtual. Featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction, Book of Numbers is an epic of the digital age, a triumph of a new generation of writers, and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do. Praise for Book of Numbers “The Great American Internet Novel is here. . . . Book of Numbers is a fascinating look at the dark heart of the Web. . . . A page-turner about life under the veil of digital surveillance . . . one of the best novels ever written about the Internet.”—Rolling Stone “A startlingly talented novelist.”—The Wall Street Journal “Remarkable . . . dazzling . . . Cohen’s literary gifts . . . suggest that something is possible, that something still might be done to safeguard whatever it is that makes us human.”—Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books

“The great poems, plays, novels, stories teach us how to go on living. . . . Your own mistakes, accidents, failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can.” So Harold Bloom, the most famous literary critic of his generation, exhorts readers of his last book: one that praises the sustaining power of poetry. "Passionate. . . . Perhaps Bloom’s most personal work, this is a fitting last testament to one of America’s leading twentieth-century literary minds."—Publishers Weekly “An extraordinary testimony to a long life spent in the company of poetry and an affecting last declaration of [Bloom's] passionate and deeply unfashionable faith in the capacity of the imagination to make the world feel habitable”—Seamus Perry, Literary Review "Reading, this stirring collection testifies, ‘helps in staying alive.’“—Kirkus Reviews, starred review This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death—completed weeks before Harold Bloom died—shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called “a universe of death.” Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of life’s troubles, taking readers on a grand tour of the poetic voices that have haunted him through a lifetime of reading. “High literature,” he writes, “is a saving lie against time, loss of individuality, premature death.” In passages of breathtaking intimacy, we see him awake late at night, reciting lines from Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, Blake, Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Jay Wright, and many others. He feels himself “edged by nothingness,” uncomprehending, but still sustained by reading. Generous and clear‑eyed, this is among Harold Bloom’s most ambitious and most moving books.

The literary critic defends the importance of Western literature from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Beckett in this acclaimed national bestseller. NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list—it is a “heroically brave, formidably learned” defense of the great works of literature that comprise the traditional Western Canon. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the essential writers of the western literary tradition (The New York Times Book Review). Placing William Shakespeare at the “center of the canon,” Bloom examines the literary contributions of Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Pablo Neruda, and many others. Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, offers a dazzling display of erudition and passion. “An impressive work…deeply, rightly passionate about the great books of the past.”—Michel Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

In this, his most comprehensive and accessible study of influence, Bloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.

In this inspiring book, a preeminent literary critic, takes readers from the Bible to 20th-century writing, searching for the ways in which literature can inform our lives.