In The Frenchmen, her new chronicle of postwar French philosophy, New York Times Book Review senior editor Emily Eakin has done something truly impressive, arranging some of the most brilliant but bilious figures of late-20th-century continental thought into a narrative that is lively and informative, never pretentious and never dull.

There was a boy in postwar Liverpool, and his name was Mike. Mike had a girlfriend named Celia, who once let him borrow a record by an American folk singer who pretended to be a lonesome hobo, though he was really just a middle-class kid from Minnesota, but with an exceptional musical talent. Mike went home to 20 Forthlin Road and played the record. Mike had a brother named Paul, who didn’t think much of the music.

It’s hard to wrestle with Gay Talese. At 93, he is old but spry, and his sentences are so quietly, consistently effective that you may not realize he has you pinned. Reading a new collection of his New York-themed reportage, A Town Without Time, I wondered if we had been taking Talese for granted, the way we took Gene Hackman for granted, or that one red sauce restaurant with the very good amatriciana that is supposed to never close — until, suddenly, it does. In its wake comes a new Chipotle.