Losing it – In which an Aging Professor Laments His Shrinking Brain... - Softcover

"Blackly funny and wonderfully thought-provoking...A raging screed directed less against the dying of the light than against any denial that the lamps--his, mine, yours--are indeed dimming all the time."--Brian Bethune, "Maclean's"--Brian Bethune "Maclean's "

"[Miller] is a prankster, a tease, an imp of the perverse, a digressor-transgressor. . .The claim could be made that not since Laurence Sterne's great 18th-century joke of a novel, "Tristram Shandy", has any book been so well-founded on the slippery rock of digression."--Henry Allen, "Wall Street Journal"--Henry Allen "Wall Street Journal "

"[Miller's] vigorous pessimism is strangely liberating. . . At times Miller's determined miserabilism gets it so right that all one can do is sit back, revel in the shock of recognition, and laugh aloud."--Laurie Taylor, "Times Higher Education Supplement"--Laurie Taylor "Times Higher Education Supplement "

"A stylish, effortlessly erudite and refreshingly clear-eyed essay about the dastardly -- yet inevitable -- fate of getting older."--Julia Keller, "Chicago Tribune", Best Books 2011--Julia Keller "Chicago Tribune "

"Miller has written an extravaganza of a book that could only have been produced by a remarkably adroit mind functioning at the very topmost top of its form. If he has lost nearly as much cortical circuitry as he asserts, there is no evidence of it here . . . . Even as he is claiming the onrush of debility, the graceful sound of his prose and its sly, wry insights betray him with an abundance of wit, wisdom, and erudition. I suspect that he wants it both ways: "See how I'm losing it, but see also how brilliant I continue to be." Well, he most emphatically cannot have it both ways, so he'd better settle on the brilliant."--Sherwin Nuland, "The New Republic"--Sherwin Nuland "The New Republic "

William Ian Miller is Thomas G. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.