Defines our understanding of colonialism and empire.

Based on his 1993 Reith Lectures, Said's essays explore what it means to be an intellectual today. He argues that the intellectual's role is to represent a message or view not only to, but for, a public, and to do so as an outsider - someone who cannot be co-opted by a government or corporation.

This book is important--and portentous--for if it is true that tragedy is dead, we face a vital cultural loss...The book is bound to start controversy...The very passion and insight with which he writes about the tragedies that have moved him prove that the vision still lives and that words can still enlighten and reveal. -R.B. Sewall, New York Times Book Review

A collection of the pivotal ideas from the great minds of Western civilization. From Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud, their concepts are described simply but without simplifying them.

Addresses developments in literary studies, including 'the growth of a kind of anti-theory', and the idea that literary theory has been institutionalized.