David Remnick is a writer with a rare gift for making readers understand the hearts and minds of our public figures. Whether it’s the decline and fall of Mike Tyson, Al Gore’s struggle to move forward after his loss in the 2000 election, or Vladimir Putin dealing with Gorbachev’s legacy, Remnick brings his subjects to life with extraordinary clarity and depth. In , he gives us his best writing from the past fifteen years, ranging from American politics and culture to post-Soviet Russia to the Middle East conflict; from Tony Blair grappling with Iraq, to Philip Roth making sense of America’s past, to the rise of Hamas in Palestine. Both intimate and deeply informed by history, is an exciting and panoramic portrait of our times.