Mirror, Mirror The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love

Mirror, Mirror is a short, relaxed book, for the educated lay reader. . . . Reading him, we feel as if we were sitting in a comfortable chair, after dinner, listening to our friend Blackburn tell us not so much about politics or social history as about what lies behind them: morals--that is, what we owe to others, as opposed to what we want for ourselves. . . . [H]is prose is clear. It is also unostentatious.--Joan Acocella, New Yorker