"Carson calls her book An Oresteia—as opposed to the Oresteia. This isn’t the trilogy of Aeschylus. Rather, the book consists of plays by three different authors: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Electra, Euripides’ Orestes. Each takes up some aspect of the House of Atreus, whose members, relations and dependents included not only Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and Helen, but Orestes, Electra, Menelaus, Cassandra . . . Many of them, predictably, came to a bad end. Half a century separates Agamemnon from Orestes, and Carson, who supplies an introduction to each play, offers interesting speculation about how shifts in tone and perspective may reflect developments in Athenian history. Perhaps equally striking, however, is the continuity in her trilogy. In American poetry, anyway, 50 years is a long time (it would bridge the gulf between, say, Robert Frost and John Ashbery), and Carson’s intelligent compilation—an Oresteia—attests to our enduring fascination in watching the highest-born families laid low."—Brad Leithauser, The New York Times Book Review

"[Heaney has] composed a poem full of brilliant strokes . . . He varies his rhythms ingeniously."—Garry Wills, The New York Times Book Review

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"Auburn has taken on some biggies here: what the link may be between genius and mental instability, why it is that lives get stuck, and how elusive the truth can be . . . [Proof's] level of accomplishment and the realness of its characters show that Auburn has both depth and a voice."—The New Yorker

"Talking Heads places Alan Bennett in the highest tier of English dramatic writers."—The New York Times

"[A] stark, spellbinding play [and] a profoundly moving excursion through the cracks in the justice system."—Peter Marks, The Washington Post

"Thinking Like a Director helps fill the void of practical handbooks that are available to theater directors. It is smart and lucidly written and should prove to be an invaluable guidebook for students and emerging directors."—Donald Margulies