This slim, sardonic entertainment from the merciless, hilarious pen of critic Max Beerbohm offers six preposterous yet familiar fin-de-siecle characters interacting with the author, himself the seventh man. From Enoch Soames, a dim and easily bypassed poet, to James Penthel, a risk addict, this delicately wrought period piece demonstrates that pretense and delusion haven't diminished much in the last hundred years. Accompanied by the author's own caricatures.

Havi Hoffman