"Concision is to the mind what cleanliness is to the body." We all have those sleepless moments late at night when our mind races from one thought to another. Theodore Dalrymple has recently used such moments to collect his thoughts in the form of maxims: those pithy statements of seemingly obvious but overlooked truths. There are 365 of them here, well more than a year's worth of contemplation. By stripping away unnecessary qualifications, Dalrymple's maxims force us to confront the universal and the timeless. Readers will be both provoked and enlightened by these Midnight Maxims: nocturnal thoughts, artfully expressed. Theodore Dalrymple is a retired doctor and psychiatrist who has written many books, including Life at the Bottom, Admirable Evasions and Saving the Planet and Other Stories.