Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture

This collection of 24 essays originally published separately between 1999 and 2011 links classic writings to examples of contemporary popular culture like the Spider-Man musical, the TV series Mad Men, and Wikipedia, which Mendelsohn (contributing editor, Travel & Leisure; The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million) compares to the Iliad: “it is the thing as a whole that matters, not only the kernel of text someone first put up.” In “Why She Fell,” Mendelsohn associates the Broadway Spider-Man “fiasco” to Greek drama by describing the crucial elements: “great talent, tremendous artistic ambition, and then humiliation.” Mendelsohn writes that Mad Men allows Baby-Boomer viewers to indulge in a fantasy of what their parents may have been like before they had children. Finally, in “Unsinkable (Why We Can’t Let Go of the Titanic),” he recalls a gift he received at age 12: membership in the Titanic Enthusiasts of America (now the Titanic Historical Society). With a gracious nod to public libraries and to reading, Mendelsohn explains how he read all the Titanic books owned by the public library and spent his meager allowance to buy others.