LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON
THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON by James Boswell is an excellent choice for a summer read. Widely considered the greatest biography in the English language, Boswell not only recounts the story of a penniless and physically challenged boy who, through dent of heroic effort, becomes the single-handed author of the first standard English dictionary and the most respected literary critic of his age, but also recreates the sounds and feelings of a key historical era, the London of the Enlightenment and American Revolutionary eras. Ably edited and footnoted by David Womersly, THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON still retains its power to amuse and instruct 225 years after its first publication.