An outstanding work, as stimulating as it is intellectually distinguished...Not only are [Posner's] arguments readily grasped, and driven home with an exhilarating forensic skill; in pursuing them, he is also compelled to define his own positions more sharply.
-- John Gross New York Times

A book filled with keen judgment, shrewd common sense, and great erudition worn gracefully. Posner's command of his materials--literature, law, and the bodies of commentary and scholarship attached to each--is truly impressive. Still more so is his ability to make the issues vividly clear to the average reader.
-- Merle Rubin Christian Science Monitor

A wonderfully original and instructive study of what literature has to teach about the law, the methods of legal argument, and the interpretation of statutes and the Constitution...Posner's adversaries are hopelessly outmatched in these arguments, but they are only supporting characters in a larger and more interesting drama--Mr. Posner's own exegesis of the relation of literature to law propounded in a series of arresting, brilliantly interwoven interpretations of dozens of literary works.
-- Christopher DeMuth Wall Street Journal