Daniel Mendelsohn

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Daniel Mendelsohn (born 1960 in Long Island) is a critic and author.

Mendelsohn graduated with a B. A. in Classics from the University of Virginia, and received his M. A. and Ph. D. in Classics from Princeton University, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. Upon completing his Ph.D. in 1994, he began a career in journalism in New York City. His review-essays about books, films, and theater appear frequently in The New York Review of Books. Between 2000 and 2002 he was the weekly book critic for New York Magazine, and his work has appeared as well in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, The Paris Review, and many other publications.

His first book, The Elusive Embrace, published in 1999 by Knopf, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. His second book, "Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays," was published by Oxford University Press in 2002. In September 2006 he published The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir/Autobiography, the National Jewish Book Award for Biography/Autobiography, the Salon Book Award, a Barnes and Noble "Discover" Award, and the American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature.

In 2005 he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for a translation of Cavafy's "Unfinished" poems, with commentary. He has also been awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing (2000) and the George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism (2001).

From 1994 to 2002, Mendelsohn was a lecturer in the Classics department at Princeton University. Currently, he is the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College.

In April 2008, Daniel Mendelsohn will be a Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany.