Mann was profoundly influenced by two philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who returned to the most ancient of all philosophical questions - "How to live?" - and whose writings offered novel perspectives for considering that question (much more perspective-offering than rigorous argument!)

Those citizens are distracted by the toys technology has supplied, and fail to recognize the ways in which what they most deeply want is made vulnerable by the coming disruptions of human relations on an over-heated planet.

Read Mann's notes, which contain precise accounts of cholera and its symptoms, and observe how careful he is throughout his fiction in getting medical details straight - then you might begin to wonder whether cholera is the only candidate for the cause of Aschenbach's death. What results from this, I think, is a deeper appreciation of Mann's brilliance in keeping so many possibilities in play. The ambiguity is even more artful than people have realized.

There are many critics whose work I greatly admire. Even though I diverge from T.J. Reed in several important ways, I've learned greatly from his writings on Mann.

In my view, all students should be given an initial opportunity to pursue the science track as far as it goes. But for those who quickly decide that track isn't for them, a different style of teaching is in order.

Look at Mann's reading habits, his explicit comments on Nietzsche, and his copy of Birth of Tragedy, and it starts to seem doubtful that this work of Nietzsche's played much role in the gestation of the novella.

In the end, we learn about the most basic philosophical questions - like "How to live?" - from a broad mixture of sources, including literature and philosophy, history and anthropology. These sources can guide our reflections on our own experiences, as we explore and reconsider. Mann contributed to such explorations in a distinctive way, and I hope my book brings that out.