"Less Than One", the first collection of Joseph Brodsky's essays, shows the full range of his interests: poetic, literary, political, and historical. "Less Than One" is, in the broadest sense, an intellectual autobiography. The volume includes Brodsky's remarkable essays on poetry and poetics. His considerations of the work of Russian writers such as Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, and Mandelstam, as well as Western poets such as Auden, Montale, Cavafy, and Derek Walcott are compelling, luminous accounts of twentieth-century poetry. "Catastrophes in the Air," on the history and future of Russian prose, is an original and moving account of the life and death of a literary tradition. Inevitably, "Less Than One" is also about politics. Such essays as "On Tyranny" and "Flight from Byzantium" are profound meditations on history and the modern age. Finally, the book is a personal memoir. The title essay and "In a Room and a Half", the piece which ends the book, stand as Brodsky's eulogies...