An NYRB Classics Original Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now. The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys’s essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of André Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon. Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time.

Sixty four tracts, compiled and edited by George C. Beckwith, corresponding secretaty of the American Peace Society. Each tract is separately as well as consecutively paged.

Excerpt from Essays in Taxation OF the essays published in this volume about one-half are new. The others have already appeared during the past five years in various scientific periodicals, like the Political Science Quarterly, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Yale Review and Journal of the Social Science Association, but have been revised and brought down to date. Although nominally disconnected, the essays, new and old, which are here printed, will, I trust, be found not to be entirely lack ing in continuity, or unworthy of the more permanent form which they now assume. Although they were written primarily from the American point of view, I venture to hope that the discussions of theory may prove to be of a wider interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.