Ruth Wisse receives a reporter of the Sun in her sun-filled and book-lined Manhattan apartment and laments that the early spring is a “season of dying.” She is reflecting on the funeral of her friend Midge Decter, among other losses. Yet it soon becomes clear that she is nothing if not a happy warrior. 

Within an hour, the famed scholar of Yiddish literature is marveling at how much work there was yet to do in the world of ideas and politics that she has long bestrode. Fiery, eloquent, and uncompromising, Professor Wisse is indispensable.