If indeed we were created to "look at this world with a happy eye, but from a sober perspective", as W.H. Auden suggests, then Alan Jacobs shows us precisely how to do so. These perceptive moral essays crackle with wit, intelligence, and a wide range of knowledge. Jacobs, a cultural hawkeye, delivers literary finesse in relevant, down-to-earth meditations on "the way we live now".

A Visit to Vanity Fair blends personal reflection with cultural criticism to address topics close to our experience -- reading the Bible (or Harry Potter) with our children, sitting with a dying friend, or watching television wildlife documentaries. In eloquent, learned prose, it gracefully models the thing it proposes: the act of paying attention. This is just what we needed -- the moral essay, revived and at its best, "striving for charity but passionate in its sympathy for human pain and weakness; aware of the powers of writing to help us enjoy or endure our lives".