Edward W. Said's stature as a major contemporary American critic rests on highly original works that link theories of representation to cultural politics. Earlier in his career, he was one of a handful of "advance-guard" critics of his generation to have understood the importance of Continental philosophy and interdisciplinary studies for the study of literature and to have assimilated them into his own critical writing. He was one of the first to adopt principles of phenomenology and existentialism for literary criticism and one of the first to explore French structuralism, helping to make it available to other American critics. More recently, he has been a highly influential proponent of the relevance of political and social awareness to the study of literature (and all the arts), and he has developed an important new agenda for political criticism. His activism in Middle Eastern affairs, which has made him a respected...