Ozick probes Dostoevsky for insights into the Unabomber, questions the role of the public intellectual, and dares to wonder what poetry is. She roams effortlessly from Kafka to James, Styron to Stein, and, in the book's most famous essay, dissects the gaudy commercialism that has reduced Anne Frank to "usable goods." Courageous, audacious, and sublime, these essays have the courage of conviction, the probing of genius, and the durable audacity to matter.

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