I’ve been an admirer of Joseph Epstein’s essays for decades. I first encountered Epstein’s work in the pages of The American Scholar. Epstein was the editor and wrote an essay for each issue. Many times, Epstein’s essay was the best piece in that issue of The American Scholar. What I like most about Epstein’s essays is that they are clearly written. No murky prose, no convoluted sentences, no head-scratching vocabulary. I always came away from reading an Epstein essay knowing more than I did before I started reading it. Epstein writes about literature, politics, history, and culture. Take a look at the range of his interests in the listing of essays below. If you’re in the mood for some sparkling essays, you’ll find them here. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Americans
George Washington
Henry Adams and Henry James
George Santayana
Adlai Stevenson
Henry Luce
Ralph Ellison
Isaac Rosenfeld
Saul Bellow
Bernard Malamud
Dwight Macdonald
Gore Vidal
Irving Howe
Alfred Kazin
Irving Kristol
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
A. J. Liebling
John Frederick Nims
Susan Sontag

Englishmen
Max Beerbohm
George Eliot
Maurice Bowra.
T. S. Eliot
Cyril Connolly
Isaah Berlin
Hugh Trevor-Roper
John Gross

Popular Culture
Alfred Kinsey
Charles Van Doren
W. C. Fields
Irving Thalberg
George Gershwin
Joe DiMaggio
Michael Jordan
James Wolcott
Malcolm Gladwell

And Others
Erich Heller
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
V. S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux
Xenophon
Matthew Shanahan
Index