Jeremy Black continues his presentation of British literary genius with a formidable but perhaps now obscure figure. Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) was "not the most comfortable commentator on his tumultuous age of the shock of the new," and was part of a generation of talent that witnessed the greatest empire in history in its peaking. Black uses Smollett's life and works to study this era and acknowledge its true achievements and values, as Smollett's craft is a fiercely honest and able scrutiny of his own people and their stories. Black's account is a fresh and lively review, very much in keeping with the author himself. Once again, Black's own eventual place among the storytellers of civilization is affirmed, as his reconstruction of the framework of this period provides the reader a broad experience of Britain, both true and imagined.