"In this incisive series of intellectual portraits, Adam Shatz, one of the Anglophone world's foremost essayists, charts the role of the committed intellectual. Through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, he shows how writers bind themselves to the project embodied in their work In a moving portrait of Edward Said, Shatz uncovers the profound role the cause of Palestinian liberation had on his life and writing. And via thinkers as diverse as Fouad Ajami,...

"Genius. The word connotes an almost unworldly power: the power to create, to grasp universal secrets, even to destroy. As renowned intellectual historian Darrin McMahon explains in Divine Fury, the concept of genius can be traced back to antiquity, when men of great insight were thought to be advised by demons. The modern idea of genius emerged in tension with a growing belief in human equality; contesting the notion that all are created equal, geniuses...

"The foundations of modern knowledge--philosophy, math, astronomy, geography -- were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed....