This is the third volume of essays by Alan Wall published by Odd Volumes, the imprint of The Fortnightly Review. As with the first two collections, theseare not academic essays. They are, however, scholarly and charged with the author’s singular intelligence and literary skills.Wall believes that the essay is the perfect form for provisional explorations and intellectual forays into the often bewildering realities of the world today. In his hands, the essay form is flexible and capacious, allowing for an engaging intellectual experimentalism which exhilarates and always avoids sliding into academic jargon and obfuscation.