A new collection of essays--on friendships long and short, on reading and learning, on the life of the mind and the life of the city--built from the experiences and wisdom of the inimitable Vivian Gornick. In On Friendship: And Other Essays , Vivian Gornick, the beloved, celebrated critic and author of Fierce Attachments , returns with a new collection of essays. Here she writes of friendship--what we understand (and don't) about connection, ourselves, and each other. She writes of her time at the City College of New York, the great transformer of the city's working class into an educated force: how it shaped her political and intellectual life and introduced her to the need for argument. And she writes, as ever, with depth and precision about reading, writing, and the books that make us who we are.