In her thirty years at The New Yorker Jane Kramer has written shrewd profiles of Italian peasants, Moroccan teenagers, Texas cowboys, German skinheads, New York City artists, and European heads of state. Reviews of her books in popular magazines and newspapers have praised the grace and clarity of her writing. Yet this cosmopolitan body of work, with an intellectual depth unmatched in contemporary journalism, has received almost no scholarly attention. Such recognition is long overdue, for Kramer has written eloquently about the politics of cultural identity--about the human migrations, generational disruptions, counterculture strivings, fading nationalist mythologies, gender wars, battles over artistic representation, and lapses of public memory that have characterized the late twentieth century.

Kramer was born on 7 August 1938 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Louis and Jessica Shore Kramer. Her father was a physician, and her writings hint at an upbringing that was quiet and conventional. She attended...