Elissa Greenwald

Elissa Greenwald was a member of the fourth class of women at Yale University, from which she received her B.A. in 1976 and her Ph.D. in English Literature in 1981. 

She has worked in education throughout her career, as an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University in New Jersey, curriculum developer for the College Board, director of writing assessment for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Program Officer for teacher programs and Grants Manager for the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and, for 15 years, as a teacher of Junior Honors and Advanced Placement English LIterature at Clifton High School in New Jersey. 

She has published a book and numerous articles of literary criticism on 19th and 20th century English and American writers, as well as a short story.

Book Reviews by Elissa Greenwald

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“In carefully crafted words, Dubus III both records and enacts his transcendence of the often brutal facts of his upbringing and our time.”

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To Paradise illustrates the power of narrative to make sense of our chaotic lives and even to endow them with beauty.

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“a work of singular creativity.”

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The history of Russia in the 21st century has been almost as tumultuous as its 20th century history.

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“Rutherford is especially good at describing the liminal space between reality and imagination, especially in the storyteller’s mind . . .”

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“Readers eagerly await more from a writer whose finger is on the pulse of the 21st century.

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Sven Birkerts’ book-length critique of Speak, Memory is a meditation on the nature of time, the past, language, literature, and the self.

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“Ash’s gift for observation and love of people make this first book memorable.”

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“Everyone can benefit from learning how a resilient woman deals with the universal experience of losing someone and learning how to keep the person’s memory alive while becoming reattached

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John Rebus has been retired from the Scottish Police for a while, but something keeps pulling him back in.

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“To find meaning and humanity in confusing times and to convey that understanding to the reader is the ultimate gift a writer can provide.”

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The Abstainer is a page turner. It begins with a dramatic real event, the hanging of three Fenian agitators, members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, in Manchester, England, in 1867.