Beginning with a short philosophical meditation written when he was 20 and concluding with nine political musings, the 44 pieces gathered here reveal Paul Auster's range. Included here are literary appraisals of John Ashbery, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Laura Riding, and Joe Brainard, but also the films of Jim Jarmusch, the high-wire artistry of Philippe Petit, and the three-hit shutout thrown by journeyman right-hander Terry Leach of the Mets, plus a prescient 1999 blast against New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.