The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham

It’s the centennial of the publication of Dubliners and Joyce seems to be everywhere. The Most Dangerous Book follows the publication history of Ulysses, detailing the book’s severe censorship and period of illegality, Joyce’s diminishing health, and the modernist movement that propelled Ulysses into notoriety. Birmingham is engaging and thorough, documenting the spirit of the age that created and supported Joyce and his work of genius with wonderful profiles of figures like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Beach. The book is immensely readable and gripping and I look forward to Birmingham’s next works of scholarship.