It is the fate of weighty books in summer to be lugged to shores and mountains, to gather sand and silt and rings where vodka-and-tonic glasses treated them like coasters, and to go unopened. War and Peace, Gravity's Rainbow, Remembrance of Things Past, The Gulag Archipelago: they will all be home soon, reminders of Mark Twain's melancholy observation that a classic is "a book which people praise and don't read."
One summer seller that people are still reading and discussing is a slim nonbook titled The Best. Compiled by two Columbia professors, Peter...
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