“Literature Upends Lives and Changes History: No Wonder People Want to Ban It,” Feb. 6

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 shaping lives throughout history, including the lives of students he taught at St. Mary's College.