, Saul Bellow’s first nonfiction collection, takes readers on a brilliantly insightful journey through literary America over the past forty years. In sentence after sentence, page after page, readers are offered brilliant perceptions and unusual insights into everyday life in America and the life of the mind. From political figures like Roosevelt and Khrushchev to artists like Mozart, Dostoevsky, and John Cheever; life in cities like New York, Paris and Chicago; and in a deeply personal "Autobiography of Ideas," Bellow, with great humour and wisdom, records the enduring thoughts and opinions of a lifetime of observation.