At the same time

Sontag's incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art, politics, and the writer's responsibility to bear witness have secured her place as one of the most important thinkers and writers of the twentieth century.

At the Same Time gathers sixteen essays and speeches written in the last years of Sontag's life, when her work was being honored on the international stage. She writes of the freedom of literature, about courage and resistance, and fearlessly addresses the dilemmas of post-9/11 America, from the degradation of our political rhetoric to the appalling torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

David Rieff describes his mother's passion in his foreword: "She wanted to experience everything, taste everything, go everywhere, do everything. Indeed, if I had only one word with which to evoke her, it would be avidity. . . . I think that, for her, the joy of living and the joy of knowing really were one and the same."

Susan Sontag immediately became a major figure of our culture with the publication in 1966 of the pathbreaking collection of essays Against Interpretation. She went on to write four novels, including In America (2000), which won the National Book Award for Fiction, as well as a collection of stories, several plays, and seven subsequent works of nonfiction, among them On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). Her many international honors included the Jerusalem Prize (2001) and the Friedenspreis (Peace Prize) of the German Book Trade (2003). She died in New York City on December 28, 2004.