Amitava Kumar, Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College, discusses his new book of essays Lunch With a Bigot: The Writer in the World published this year by Duke University Press. "These are the very best sort of essays: the kind in which the pleasure of reading derives from the pleasure of following a writer's mind as it moves from subject to subject, making us see connections we might otherwise have been unawayre of. Often a single paragraph contains such a story or detail so arresting that the reader must pause to appreciate it before moving on." ~ Francine Prose, author of Reading Like a Writer