Louis Markos packs an awful lot into the 130 pages of his new Literature: A Student’s Guide (Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition) . The book is an introduction to poetry, with a chapter on metrics and rhyme and another on poetic tropes and imagery. Halfway through, it turns into a chronologically arranged annotated reading list, and not just for poetry. His final chapter sums up critical theories from Plato to postmodernism, with Christian assessment of each. And then he squeezes in a glossary. It’s hard to imagine a better briefer introduction to literature.