This memoir records the story of the author's personal journey toward a life of university teaching and probes that story in reflective essays on a variety of subjects. One group of essays has to do with the characteristic activities and institutional setting of a professor. Other essays explore ways of experiencing the world as mysterious, beautiful, and tragic. One piece offers a rather somber account of current ways in which the American experiment in democracy is in peril. Scraps of what looks like an intellectual autobiography are scattered over the pages of the narrative, recalling the puzzles that gave rise to a number of writing projects. In a way this is a book of paradoxes and antitheses. Janus-like, it faces toward the past and the future. It offers generalized convictions and specific observations, treats both the ordinary themes of life experience and tangled esoterica, and presents both the experiences of an individual and an analysis of educational institutions. As a whole, the book invites readers to join the author in "thinking about things."

La Découverte de l’île Frivole (1751) se présente comme un épisode inédit du Voyage autour du monde de l’amiral anglais George Anson et de son équipage. Le texte décrit leurs aventures sur une île étrange, dont les habitants, nommés Frivolites, sont tout entiers occupés de modes, de coiffures, de romans et de desserts historiés. Cette parodie chatoyante présente un tableau sévère mais enjoué de la France des premières années du siècle de Louis XV. Elle résonne avec les pages les plus critiques de Jean-Jacques Rousseau contre le luxe et la mollesse du siècle, ou celles, ironiques, que Voltaire fit paraître contre ses compatriotes. Elle n’épargne pas non plus les Anglais, alors que l’anglomanie bat son plein. Ce volume constitue la première édition critique bilingue d’un texte qui a fait en son temps beaucoup de bruit, tant en France qu’en Angleterre. La Découverte de l’île Frivole (1751) is presented as a supplement to George Anson’s Voyage Round the World, and recounts the adventures of the English admiral and his crew on a strange island whose inhabitants, the Frivolians, are devoted to fashion, hairstyles, novels, and fancy desserts. This tale is at once both playful and cynical and its biting irony spares neither the reputation of France nor that of England. It resonates with the most critical attacks by Jean-Jacques Rousseau against luxury and refinement, or those of Voltaire against his compatriots. This volume provides the first bilingual critical edition of a text that, in its time, caused a stir both in France and in England.

In 2006, a cartoon in a Danish newspaper depicted the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban. The cartoon created an international incident, with offended Muslims attacking Danish embassies and threatening the life of the cartoonist. Editorial cartoons have been called the most extreme form of criticism society will allow, but not all cartoons are tolerated. Unrestricted by journalistic standards of objectivity, editorial cartoonists wield ire and irony to reveal the naked truths about presidents, celebrities, business leaders, and other public figures. Indeed, since the founding of the republic, cartoonists have made important contributions to and offered critical commentary on our society. Today, however, many syndicated cartoons are relatively generic and gag-related, reflecting a weakening of the newspaper industry's traditional watchdog function. Chris Lamb offers a richly illustrated and engaging history of a still vibrant medium that "forces us to take a look at ourselves for what we are and not what we want to be." The 150 drawings in Drawn to Extremes have left readers howling-sometimes in laughter, but often in protest.