January 22, 2014. Writing the Self has been named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2013 by Choice, the magazine of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Here’s Bloomsbury Academic‘s announcement on its Literary Studies blog.

On its webpage Choice writes: “Every year, Choice subject editors single out for recognition the most significant print and electronic works reviewed in Choice during the previous calendar year. Appearing annually in Choice’s January issue, this prestigious list of publications reflects the best in scholarly titles and attracts extraordinary attention from the academic library community.”

In her review of Writing the Self in the December 2013 issue of Choice, Professor Heidi Storl wrote: “This concise yet comprehensive work by Heehs (independent scholar) fills a large niche in the literature on the nature and history of self. It offers an account of the self over the last two millennia, thereby capturing fully the idea that the self ‘has changed from a ghostly spirit to a substantial soul to an autonomous individual to a center of expression to a fiction constructed by social or biological forces.’ By deliberately including non-Western traditions regarding selfhood, this volume also broadens the scope of more typical discussions regarding self. In moving beyond standard Anglo-American and Continental approaches, Heehs ensures a rich future for selfhood scholarship.”