Fascinating to see how some essays date quickly while others are timeless. The former includes—not any as I’ve reviewed them! Amazing. Lightman’s themes are largely autobiographical, place related, ethnic and émigré related and focused on self and world. Several (Aciman/Egypt, Gordon/Rome, Kohari/Judea) refer to childhood roots and uprooting. Several relate to illness or disability (McCann/liver transplant,  Skloot/ post-viral encephalitis). Several are primarily philosophical (Singer/poverty, Sullivan/hate, Weinberg/ religion and science). All are well done and worth reading.

Essays Include:

• Andre Aciman             The Last Time I Saw Paris
• Wendell Berry             In Distrust of Movements
• Ian Buruma                         The Joys and Perils of Victimhood
• Fred D’Aguiar             A Son in the Shadow
• Edwidge Danticat             Westbury Court
• William H. Gass             In Defense of the Book
• Mary Gordon                         Rome: the Visible City
• Edward Hoagland             Earth’s Eye
• Jamaica Kincaid             Those Words That Echo…Echo…Echo Through Life
• Geeta Kothari             If You Are What You Eat, What Am I?
• Richard McCann             The Resurrectionist
• Cynthia Ozick             The Synthetic Sublime
• Scott Russell Sanders The Force of Spirit
• Lynne Sharon Schwartz At a Certain Age
• Floyd Skloot Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain
• Mark Slouka Listening for Silence
• Cheryl Strayed             Heroine
• Andrew Sullivan             What’s So Bad About Hate?
• Peter Singer                         The Singer Solution to World Poverty
• Steven Weinberg             A Designer Universe
• Terry Tempest Williams A Shark in the Mind of One Contemplating

Wilderness