I urge all lovers of American prose to read it... Cynthia Ozick is, for my money, the most accomplished and graceful literary stylist of our time... Her pieces have genuine durability. They are great essays.John Sutherland
The New York Times Book Review

Full of arresting turns of phrase. Even when you disagree with her, she electrifies your mind.
The New York Times

Her best collection to date.
The Boston Globe

If there is such a thing as a literary pantheon in America, then Cynthia Ozick is surely its Athena . . . Ozick casts sentences that fairly pulse with the electricity of a highly charged mind.
Washington Post

As an essayist, Cynthia Ozick is a very good storyteller. Her arguments are plots . . . They twist and turn, digress, slow down and speed up, surprise with sudden illuminations.
New York Times Book Review

Cynthia Ozick is double-barreled. She's an inventive and revelatory fiction writer and an exacting, battle-ready critic; an impish writer of conscience and a creative intellectual.
Los Angeles Times

The magazine articles collected here do more than stand on their own. They jump up and down, they grab the reader by the shirt-front... Art & Ardor... is by turns quarrelsome, quirky, unfair, funny and brilliant.
The New York Times Book Review