Damrosch proceeds at a...leisurely pace, though he occasionally makes weightless associative leaps.

It’s a thoughtful work of nonfiction, one that is unafraid of its own intelligence while also never deigning to condescend to its reader. That’s not an easy balance to strike, especially when one considers the massive range of the canon Damrosch has assembled. It’s worth noting too that you don’t actually have to have read all the books discussed within. In truth, unless you yourself are a scholar of comparative literature, the odds are pretty good that you have not—as I said, it is a vast array of wildly disparate work. But thanks to Damrosch’s insightful breakdowns, the context is clear even if you yourself have never consumed the actual text.

The reader cannot help noticing that Mr. Damrosch’s intellectual odyssey doesn’t feature stops in Germany or Russia, two countries with many great writers...Regardless of its ostensible departures and arrivals, Around the World in 80 Books is a narrative in which lines on the map tend to blur.

Those of us who experienced Phileas Fogg through either the novel or the movie recall a hectic adventure, undertaken after a boast in a gentlemen’s club. Damrosch follows a far more leisurely pace in keeping with his goal of expanding our knowledge of the books and authors he has chosen for this project.

An enlightening tour.

A vast, fascinating latticework of books within books.