Interpreting the modern world through the literature it produces, the author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony offers these three characteristically erudite yet engaging essays. In "The Vienna Gas Company," Roberto Calasso charts the rise of the Nazis through the lives and works of Ernst Junger, Samuel Beckett, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline; "Sighting of the Towers" suggests that Baudelaire had a dream anticipating the collapse of the World Trade Center; and "Tourists and Terrorists" brings new perspective to the dark word of jihad.