A book on the experience of reading Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels that celebrates Le Guin's monumental worldbuilding achievement recaptures the glories of childhood reading.

John Plotz is Mandel Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University and editor of the B-Sides feature in Public Books as well as B-Side Books (Columbia University Press, 2021). He co-hosts two podcasts: Novel Dialogue and Recall This Book. His books include The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics (University of California Press, 2000), Portable Property: Victorian Culture on the Move (Princeton University Press, 2008), and Semi-Detached: Aesthetic Experience from Dickens to Keaton (Princeton University Press, 2017) He is among the co-founders of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative.

• Introduction: Reading and Re-reading Le Guin


• 1: Earthsea and the Fantasy Tradition


• 2: Le Guin's First Earthsea


• 3: Earthsea Revisited


• 4: My Earthsea