This price­less col­lec­tion of some twen­ty-six essays, pref­aces, and intro­duc­tions by one of America’s most insight­ful edi­tors reflects Solotaroff’s own jour­ney from anx­ious grad­u­ate stu­dent to trust­wor­thy crit­ic and guide through the lit­er­ary world of the last half cen­tu­ry, espe­cial­ly the Jew­ish lit­er­ary world. It is a per­son­al but not a solip­sis­tic jour­ney, a demon­stra­tion of what his mem­oirs (the last one was near­ly fin­ished and is sure to be pub­lished posthu­mous­ly) por­tray as a bat­tle with self-cre­at­ed fam­i­ly demons. The wannabe fic­tion writer became the edi­tor by scrap­ping his mir­ror for a lens and dis­cov­er­ing authors in their man­u­scripts, what­ev­er they might seem to be in com­pa­ny. Per­son­al anec­dote, nev­er name drop­ping, might frame Solotaroff’s insight to a writer, but terse sum­ma­ry and point­ed analy­sis of the writ­ing prove the point. Each of these essays in crit­i­cism begins by apply­ing Matthew Arnold’s touch­stone of see­ing the work or the career whole — as what in itself it real­ly is. Thus Wal­ter Ben­jamin sees all good sto­ry telling as root­ed not in the teller but in the tale, Alfed Kazin chron­i­cles not so much region­al sto­ry pat­terns as the essence of the Amer­i­can imag­i­na­tion, Irv­ing Howe’s world of ​“Our­selves” is but the Jew­ish imprint on any immi­grant cul­ture: after a first generation’s deter­mi­na­tion to retain the old ways, and a second’s pro­cliv­i­ty to for­get them, the third generation’s need to stamp them in mem­o­ry — before a final assim­i­la­tion. Some two dozen writ­ers, of poet­ry, fic­tion, and crit­i­cism, often, like Solotaroff him­self up from work­ing-class ori­gins, come alive as forces and influ­ences on a glob­al read­er­ship. And the ​“com­mu­ni­ty’ of the title includes ded­i­cat­ed grant providers for under-fund­ed sponsors.