For two decades, the New Yorker's James Wood has been widely regarded as the leading literary critic of the English-speaking world. This anthology collects his reviews and essays on classic writers (Gustave Flaubert, Herman Melville), recent legends (Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson) and significant contemporaries (Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante), all well-crafted essays, composed in a distinctive literary style all Wood's own. Among the other authors under consideration here are Virginia Woolf, Cormac McCarthy, George Orwell, W.G. Sebald, and Anton Chekhov, while the autobiographical pieces include "Packing My Father-in-Law's Library."