In <i>Waiting for the Barbarians</i>, Daniel Mendelsohn—“considered by some to be one of the greatest critics of our time” (<i>Poets & Writers</i>)—brings together twenty-four of his recent essays on a dazzlingly broad range of subjects from <i>Avatar </i>to Stendhal and from the <i>Titanic </i>to Susan Sontag. In this collection, Mendelsohn moves from penetrating considerations of the ways in which the classics continue to make themselves felt in contemporary life and letters (Anne Carson's translations of Sappho, Greek myth in <i>Spider-Man</i>) to trenchant takes on pop spectacles—none more controversial than his “brilliant” essay on <i>Mad Men</i>, Tina Brown's first choice for NPR's <i>Must Reads</i>. Also gathered here are essays devoted to the art of fiction, from Jonathan Littell's blockbuster <i>The Kindly Ones</i> to forgotten gems like the novels of Theodor Fontane. In a final section, “Private Lives,” prefaced by his major <i>New Yorker</i> essay on phony memoirs, Mendelsohn considers the lives and work of authors as disparate as Sontag, Noël Coward, and Jonathan Franzen.