Welcome to the Prager You Book Club. I'm Michael Knowles and today we're talking about a tale of two cities by Charles Dickens one of the biggest novels ever written in so many senses of that word.

I am joined by my friend Alan Estran, executive director of Prager U,

because the tale's two cities is too big for just me to cover.

I there's no one I can do it.

You need to be here to help me with this lift because it's very, very big.

You brought up an interesting point.

It's one of the most famous books ever written.

It has probably the most famous introduction

to a novel ever, and it has one of the most famous closings of all time.

I think it's the, it is the most famous opening to any

novel and it's the most famous closing of any novel in one novel in one novel a

lot of pages but but one novel.

So that should give you some idea of how important this is in the history of literature to

Victorian literature and why the, I consider the tale of two cities as the gateway to Victorian literature.

Someone is going to start on Victorian literature, I can't think of a better place to start than

tale of two cities. And the thing about this introduction is even for people who have

never read the book, everybody knows the introduction. The introduction is,

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.

It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair.

We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. We were all going direct to heaven. We were all going direct the other way. In short the period was so

far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on

its being received for good or for evil in the superlative degree of comparison only.

...