This fine collection is accompanied by an essay by Sir John Pollock that skillfully places the writers' ideas in the perspective of recent experience. A crucial document for lawyers, the letters are also delightful reading. Clifton Fadiman, in The New Yorker, noted that, taking in "questions of philosophy, history and literature, touching--often wittily--on hundreds of famous personages and appealing, I should think, to anyone interested in the play of two first-rate minds...these volumes recall to us something forgotten these days: the charm...of scholarship when it is the easy tool...