“This is not a book to promote tranquility, and readers in quest of peace of mind should look elsewhere,” writes Paul Fussell in the foreword to this original, sharp, tart, and thoroughly engaging work. The celebrated author of Class and Bad focuses his lethal wit on habitual euphemizers, professional dissimulators, artistically pretentious third-rate novelists, sexual puritans, and the “Disneyfiers of life.”