The events of our lives range in importance from negligible to noteworthy; from the routine to the profound; from the moments that we are likely to forget, to those that we are compelled to remember. Yet each turn of our lives possesses some shade of true meaning, if only we remain alert enough to find it. The hundred essays in this book all began as newspaper articles. Here, they reappear in an edited and reordered form, an attempt to distance them from journalism and to restore them to life.