Better Living Through Literature cover art

Better Living Through Literature

How Books Change Lives and (Sometimes) History

Preview
Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Better Living Through Literature

By: Robin Bates
Narrated by: Mr Daniel Hamel
Try Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $27.99

Buy Now for $27.99

About this listen

For 2500 years people have been debating how literature changes lives, and versions of those debates continue today in classrooms, school and library boardrooms, and state legislatures. The life-transforming potential of books caught the attention of Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Percy Shelley, and many others.

Better Living through Literature surveys what the great thinkers have said on the subject, from Plato and Aristotle to Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud to W.E.B Du Bois, Harold Bloom, and Martha Nussbaum. Contending that reading is sometimes like playing with dynamite, Robin Bates brings the issues alive with compelling accounts of stories and poems upending individual lives and sometimes history itself.

©2024 Robin Bates (P)2025 Robin Bates
Literary History & Criticism Philosophy Society Socialism Capitalism
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.