2018
First Published
4.36
Average Rating
572
Number of Pages
Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody's list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Joseph Epstein's The Ideal of Essays is the fourth such volume from Axios Press and contains 63 essays. Subjects range from domestic life to current social trends to an appraisal of “contemporary nuttiness.” It follows the much acclaimed Essays in Biography, 2012, A Literary Education and Other Essays, 2014, and Wind Shorter Essays, 2016. After reading Epstein, we see life with a fresh eye. We also see ourselves a little more clearly. This is what Plutarch life teaching by example, but with a wry smile and such a sure hand that we hardly notice the instruction. It is just pure pleasure.
Avg Rating
4.36
Number of Ratings
83
5 STARS
48%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
10%
2 STARS
1%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Joseph Epstein
Author · 26 books
Joseph Epstein is the author of, among other books, Snobbery, Friendship, and Fabulous Small Jews. He has been editor of American Scholar and has written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Commentary, Town and Country, and other magazines.
