Includes essays about E.B. White, Harold Ross, Mark Twain, John Hersey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Donald Barthelme, Vladimir Nabokov, V.S. Pritchett, William Maxwell, William Steig, John Updike, and others.

"Long known for his range and supple prose (he is the only writer elected to membership in both the Baseball Hall of Paine and the American Academy of Arts and Letters), Angell won the 2015 American Society of Magazine Editors' Best Essay award for "This old man," which forms a centerpiece for this book. This deeply personal account is a survey of the limitations and discoveries of great age, with abundant life, poignant loss, jokes, retrieved moments, and fresh love, set down in an informal and moving fashion. A flood of readers from different generations have discovered and shared this classic piece. Angell's fluid prose and native curiosity make him an amiable and compelling companion on the page. The book gathers essays, letters, light verse, book reviews, Talk of the Town stories, farewells, haikus, profiles, Christmas greetings, late thoughts on the costs of war. Whether it's a Fourth of July in rural Maine, a beloved British author at Work, Derek Jeter's departure, the final game of the 2014 World Series, an all-dog opera, editorial exchanges with john Updike, or a letter to a son, what links the pieces is the author's perceptions and humor, his utter absence of self-pity, and his appreciation of friends and colleagues--writers, ballplayers, editors, artists--encountered over the course of a full and generous life."--Book jacket.