"Because Lex Runciman gives himself to it with such unreserved and, more distinctively, unembarrassed attention, the domestic world -- the world of the household, backyard, the neighborhood street -- is flooded with a pathos, a quality of light, a delicious and familar beauty that one sees in the paintings of Vermeer. In the range of its ideas and responses, in the gravity of its concerns, this book is refreshingly, disarmingly large." -