Bloom's great distinction and power as a literary critic, and a best-selling one at that, is the union of his extraordinary erudition and his profound love for literature. A gifted reader, teacher, and writer, he has celebrated literature's munificence in such influential books as The Western Canon (1994) and How to Read and Why (2000), and now conducts a magnificent inquiry into that elusive quality called genius. Bloom strictly profiles "geniuses of language"--poets, dramatists, novelists, philosophers, and religious writers--and, except for a core group that includes Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Milton, and Tolstoy, has selected his 100 (all deceased, including the most contemporary: Octavio Paz, Ralph Ellison, Iris Murdoch) not because they're the top geniuses, but because their quests were in some measure cosmic, their language transcendent, and their lives intriguing. Literature is a spiritual calling for Bloom and his geniuses, so he has organized this bountiful volume according to the Kabbalah's 10 divine attributes or emanations, the Sefirot, which chart "the process of creation." This makes for some wonderfully fresh and provocative juxtapositions, and for an elevating concentration on how each writer extends the path toward wisdom. Personal heroes such as Dr. Samuel Johnson and Ralph Waldo Emerson receive particularly incisive readings, as do Victor Hugo, Isaac Babel, Virginia Woolf, Wallace Stevens--well, one could go on. Bloom's mission in this stupendous yet intimate compendium of succinct yet sophisticated essays is "to activate the genius of appreciation" in his readers for one of humanity's finest callings, and that he does with ardor, art, wit, and deep knowledge.