Includes index.

"In this incisive series of intellectual portraits, Adam Shatz, one of the Anglophone world's foremost essayists, charts the role of the committed intellectual. Through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, he shows how writers bind themselves to the project embodied in their work In a moving portrait of Edward Said, Shatz uncovers the profound role the cause of Palestinian liberation had on his life and writing. And via thinkers as diverse as Fouad Ajami, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, as well as the novelists Michel Houllebecq and Richard Wright, he explores the struggle authors face in reconciling writing with politics, thought with ethical commitments"-- Provided by publisher.