Now in paperback: an exhilarating journey through the world of books, ideas, and activism; a finalist for the  Foreword Reviews  INDIES Editor's Choice Prize for Nonfiction.  "Steve Wasserman is a treasure of American letters and his book is a testament, above all, to a literary life lived to the fullest." — Héctor Tobar Born on the West Coast, the son of Bronx-born parents, Steve Wasserman is a generalist and public intellectual but is perhaps less well known as a cultural essayist and social critic of the first rank. In thirty splendid essays, originally published in such diverse publications as the New Republic and The Nation , The American Conservative and The Progressive , The Village Voice and the Los Angeles Times , Wasserman delivers a riveting account of the awakening of an empathetic sensibility and a lively mind. Taken together, they reveal the depth and breadth of his enthusiasms and range over politics, literature, and the tumults of a world in upheaval. They include the remarkable tale of a bookstore owner who wouldn't let him buy the books he wanted, to his brave against-the-grain take on the Black Panthers, to his shrewd assessment of the fast-changing world of publishing. Here is, as Joyce Carol Oates notes, "arguably the best concise history of Cuba and the legendary Fidel Castro; beautifully composed eulogies for two close friends, Susan Sontag and Christopher Hitchens; sharply perceptive commentary on Daniel Ellsberg; a thrillingly candid interview with W. G. Sebald."