Describing his art, Paul Klee once said, "I take a line out for a walk". This is precisely what Joseph Epstien does in his trenchant informal essays. In this fourth collection, he takes out such wildly various "lines" as gossip, gambling, height (or the lack of it), hats, smoking, fame, the madness of compulsive reading and walks them on the leash of his own strong viewpoint. "Witty, civilized, erudite, self-mocking - intelligent entertainments more British than American in their roots yet most emphatically American in content and style...Invariably his comments...are interesting, sometimes they are striking, often they are amusing."