Malice that cannot speak its name, cold-blooded but secret hostility, impotent desire, hidden rancor and spite--all cluster at the center of envy. Envy clouds thought, writes Joseph Epstein, clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of serenity, and ends in shriveling the heart. Of the seven deadly sins, he concludes, only envy is no fun at all.
Writing in a conversational, erudite, self-deprecating style that wears its learning lightly, Epstein takes us on a stimulating tour of the many faces of envy. He considers what great thinkers--such as John Rawls, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche--have...

In these vivid portraits of prominent twentieth-century intellectuals, Edward Shils couples the sensitivity of a biographer with the profound knowledge of a highly respected scholar. Ranging as widely across various disciplines as Shils himself did, the essays gathered here share a distaste for faddists who "run with the intellectual mob" and a deep respect for intellectuals who maintain their integrity under great pressure.
Highlights include an affectionate treatment of Leo Szilard, the physicist whose involvement with the development of the atomic bomb led him to work ceaselessly to...

Epstein writes about authors to whom he feels indebted, those he has revered and learned from. His range extends from Matthew Arnold to Tom Wolfe, from George Santayana to S.J. Perelman.

Paul Klee's words on his art, "I take a line out for a walk," describe precisely what the author of these essays does--he takes out such "lines" as gossip, gambling, height (or the lack of it), hats, smoking, fame or compulsive reading and "walks them" in his own discursive style.

From America's call for a free press to its embrace of the capitalist system, Democracy in America--first published in 1835--enlightens, entertains, and endures as a brilliant study of our national government and character. Philosopher John Stuart Mill called it "among the most remarkable productions of our time." Woodrow Wilson wrote that de Tocqueville's ability to illuminate the actual workings of American democracy was "possibly without rival."

For today's readers, de Tocqueville's concern about the effect of majority rule on the rights of individuals remains deeply meaningful....

Snobbery is Epstein's deliciously readable (Harper's Bazaar) collection of essays skewering all manner of elitism. Filled with dishy detail, Snobbery takes up its subject in contemporary America, examining the discriminating qualities in all.

In Fabulous Small Jews, the best-selling author Joseph Epstein has produced eighteen charming, magical, and finely detailed stories. They are populated by lawyers, professors, scrap-iron dealers, dry cleaners, all men of a certain age who feel themselves adrift in the radically changed values of the day. Epstein's richly drawn characters are at various crossroads and turning points in their lives: bitter Seymour Hefferman, who anonymously sends scathing postcards to writers until he gets caught; Moe Bernstein, who, inspired by his grandson, decides to attend to his own health after long...

The author sketches a witty and incisive anatomy of the modern friendship: its duties and requirements, the various kinds of friendships, the differences between male and female friendships, the complications marriage creates, and even what happens when sex enters the equation.

Epstein's sixth collection of personal pieces winningly and brilliantly rounds off his 23-year tenure as editor of The American Scholar. Among the topics covered are naps, Gershwin aging, name-dropping, long books, pet peeves, talent vs. genius, Anglophilia, and surgery--the head and the heart. Excerpted in The New Yorker.

"Ambition is not what it used to be," writes Joseph Epstein. The desire to get ahead no longer evokes the same admiration it once did indeed, modern novelists seem hardly able to deal with ambition without a sneer. But is ambition necessarily synonymous with ruthless, narrow self-interest? Or, as Mr. Epstein suggests, is it "the fuel of achievement" an honorable way to influence and advance civilization? Mr. Epstein s sketches of eminent Americans from Benjamin Franklin (that premier go-getter) to Henry Ford, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Adlai Stevenson, and the Rockefeller,...