Coorating Nathan's 70'th birthday, the editor here collects from his writings over the years, representative essays, paragraphs and sentences which highlight the many faceted interests and attitudes of the man. Kaleidoscopic, they include much of his material on the theater, personality sketches of Sinclair Lewis, O'Neill, Dreiser, Mencken, Molnar, etc., personal history and opinion, and commentary on a wide variety of things, from women, marriage and sex, to exercise, medicine, brahmin baiting, criticism, all the arts and random trivia. There are knocks as well as nods, chilling as well as bracing observation and consideration and the overall is a vista of an alive, sometimes avangelical, constant irritant. From out of print and current books, these excerpts, well assembled in their classifications, mirror an entertaining if controversial personality.