Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction / Jay Parini -- Part 1: Reading The Writers -- Novelists and critics of the 1940s (1953) -- Tarzan revisited (1963) -- Top ten best-sellers according to the Sunday New York Times as of January 7, 1973 (1973) -- French letters: theories of the new novel (1967) -- American plastic: the matter of fiction (1974) -- Calvino's novels (1974) -- Hacks of academe (1976) -- Some memories of the glorious bird and an earlier self (1976) -- Edmund Wilson: this critic and this gin and these shoes (1980) -- William Dean Howells (1983) -- Dawn Powell: the American writer (1987) -- Montaigne (1992) -- Rabbit's own burrow (1996) -- Part 2: Reading The World -- Passage to Egypt (1963) -- Pornography (1966) -- Holy family (1967) -- Homage to Daniel Shays (1972) -- Pink triangle and yellow star (1981) -- Theodore Roosevelt: an American sissy (1981) -- Second American Revolution (1981) -- National security state (1988) -- Monotheism and its discontents (1992) -- Black Tuesday (2002) -- State of the union (2004).

From the Publisher: Gore Vidal-novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist, indefatigable political commentator, and controversialists-is America's premier man of letters. No other living writer brings more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality, and provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay. This long-needed volume comprises some twenty-four of his best-loved pieces of criticism, political commentary, memoir, portraiture, and, occasionally, unfettered score settling. It will stand as one of the most enjoyable and durable works from the hand and mind of this vastly accomplished and entertaining immortal of American literature.