Susan Sontag. 
 
Farrar Straus Giroux: 1969. First printing. Hardcover in a jacket. Unclipped jacket has a closed tear to the top edge of the front cover, sticker residue to the back cover, and rubbing to the foot of the spine. Blue cloth covered boards with rubbing along the top of the boards and crown of the spine. Small nick to the fore edge of the text block. 274 pages. Book is near fine, jacket is very good.
 
Sontag wanted to know everything and to question everything about the moment she lived. Her essays convince you she can. Where else will you read with equal viruosity analyses of pornography, E.M. Cioran, and America's war in Vietnam? 
 
"For over a century, this historicizing perspective has occupied the very heart of our ability to understand anything at all. Perhaps once a marginal tic of consciousness, it's now a gigantic, uncontrollable gesture - the gersture whereby man indefatigably patronizes himself."