Thomas Geoghegan: Take the high road through the low dishonest decades of our time in this wonderful book of essays by George Scialabba. Count the gems along the way. With a style equal to Auden's and a conscience equal to Orwell's, this book is a matchless political education. David Bromwich: George Scialabba is a keeper of the conscience of American radicalism. Patient, exacting, and concise, his reviews of contemporary journalists and historians have a sharp eye for logical jumps and rhetorical dodges, and a generous power of admiration. Corey Robin: Kafka believed that "writing and office cannot be reconciled, since writing has its center of gravity in depth, whereas the office is on the surface of life." Like Kafka, George Scialabba knows something about desk jobs and the writing life. Like Kafka, Scialabba knows that Kafka is wrong.

Whether his topic is literature or the office, philosophy or foreign policy, Scialabba leavens our depths with the play of his surfaces and intensifies our surfaces with the weight of his depths. Chris Hayes: George Scialabba is one of my very favorite essayists. I'll stop what I'm doing to read whatever he writes.