Away for a week, a chance to finally settle down with a big, tempting book long on the back burner, and I am: The Solzhenitsyn Reader (edited by top Solzhenitsyn scholars Dan Mahoney of Assumption College and Edward Ericson of Calvin College). Dan is an old friend, as is former NR managing editor Kevin Lynch, whose review in The American Conservative described this smorgasbord of the literary giant’s works thusly: ”I was, I should admit, at first doubtful that the drama and intensity of Solzhenitsyn’s longer works would come across as powerfully in excerpted form, but I need not have worried. Whichever one you start with, whether it’s The First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Gulag Archipelago, or The Red Wheel, you are immediately absorbed into Solzhenitsyn’s world.” Kevin’s absolutely right. You can order The Solzhenitsyn Reader directly from Intercollegiate Studies Institute here.