Unlike standard biographies, this one reads like a prose version of a superbly rendered documentary, in the style of Ken Burns.

FORBES: REAGAN'S CENTURY

But his generous imagination was equally capable of appreciating the prose of a conservative thinker like Edmund Burke.

ECONOMIST: Literary lives (1)

Ms. FRANCINE PROSE (Author, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them): Well.

NPR: Could You Be the Great American Novelist?

But they may not necessarily feel like slogging through the dense prose of a literary study.

ECONOMIST: Theodor Seuss Geisel

Westerns, Regency romances, film noir: those are genres kinds of stories with specific categories of subjects and conventions for their content and presentation. (Stories about superheroes are a genre, too.) Prose fiction, sculpture, video: those, like comics, are media forms of expression that have few or no rules regarding their content other than the very broad ones imposed on them by their form.

NPR: More Recommendations

The publishing firms that survive what promises to be a wrenching transition will be those whose bosses and employees can learn quickly to think like multimedia impresarios rather than purveyors of perfect prose.

ECONOMIST: The future of publishing: E-publish or perish | The

Tight prose is often wanting when it comes to fantasy, and a book like The Steel Remains is a breath of much-needed fresh air.

FORBES: Book Review: 'The Steel Remains' By Richard Morgan

Ms. PROSE: Well, yeah, and I also think - I mean this sounds like a sort of slightly nutty thing to say - but I also think that certain books just kind of pop into your hands at the moment you need to write - to read them.

NPR: Could You Be the Great American Novelist?

We'll forget what it's like to flex those dorsal muscles, to consciously decipher a thorny stretch of prose.

WSJ: How E-Readers Change the Way We Read | Head Case by Jonah Lehrer