Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Coles calls this collection of essays "a mind's discursive, even rambling expository efforts to comprehend various aspects of a late twentieth-century American life as it has been lived by a doctor, a teacher, a husband, a father and a citizen." The 56 pieces written in the 1990s convey some of the major obsessions and problems of our era including the underclass, children and media violence, and preachers and politics.
But Coles, as usual, is at his best musing on social ethics ("respect for others, a thoughtfulness and kindness that has the flesh of deeds") in the lives and works of novelists and painters. He sees these artists as moral mentors who teach us about the enduring values that make life worth living. Among those he discusses are Raymond Carver, Walker Percy, Ralph Ellison, Graham Greene, Toni Morrison, Edward Hopper, Edvard Munch, and Rembrandt.