Fadiman sees herself as at once reviving and feminising the "familiar essay" as written by Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt: subjective but also about a subject, containing "equal measures" of the personal and the critical, the heart and the head. This collection, a follow-up to Ex Libris, is hence an autobiography in fragments, in which we see the author undergoing youthful and adult rites of passage, and with her parents, brother, husband and children; but these glimpses occur in the context of discussions of favourite authors (Lamb and Coleridge), pleasures (ice-cream and coffee) and miscellaneous topics ranging from an Arctic explorer to the American flag. The 19th-century essays, Fadiman says, were like chaps' fireside chats; hers resemble long letters to a friend. She blends scholarship and self-exposure with considerable charm, only misjudging the mix on the one occasion she gets involved in a debate - a contrived piece drawing parallels between Procrustes's bed and academia's left v right "culture wars".