Rate My Professor Robert Zaretsky

Robert Zaretsky is a professor with a joint appointment in the Honors College and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Houston. He teaches a variety of courses ranging from the histories of existentialism and terrorism to the histories of Paris and Berlin. Zaretsky earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from McGill University, a master’s degree in history from the University of Vermont, and a doctorate in history from the University of Virginia.

He is the author of several books, including Nîmes at War: Religion, Politics, and Public Opinion in the Gard, 1938-1944 (Penn State University Press, 1995), Cock and Bull Stories: Folco de Baroncelli and the Invention of the Camargue (University of Nebraska Press, 2004), Albert Camus: Elements of a Life (Cornell University Press, 2010), A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning (Harvard University Press, 2013), Boswell’s Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2015), Catherine & Diderot: The Empress, the Philosopher and the Fate of the Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2019), The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas (University of Chicago Press, 2021), and Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague (University of Chicago Press, 2022). He is co-author of The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding (Yale University Press, 2009) and France and Its Empire Since 1870 (Oxford University Press, 2010). His forthcoming book Chasing Happiness: Stendhal and the Art of Living is scheduled for publication by the University of Chicago Press in 2027. Zaretsky is a frequent contributor to publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, Foreign Affairs, and Chronicle of Higher Education, and he serves as a columnist for the Jewish Forward. He previously served as history editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.