The Rub of Time

[1][2] The first United States edition, published by Knopf on 6 February 2018, added one essay and updated those years to 1994–2017.

The 45 essays are divided into groups by theme, including politics, sports, literature, the U.S., and the British royal family.

All editions but the first include a 2017 Amis piece for Esquire titled "President Trump Orates in Ohio."

In The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that "We can quibble about whether the ability to turn out a predetermined quantity of lucid, witty, sometimes moving, rarely boring prose on assignment and on deadline should be classified as a talent or a skill...What seems to me beyond argument is that Amis is good at it.

"[1] Leo Robson in The New Statesman found Amis' literary criticism "tiresome, and all too predictable," but finds that his "brisk generalisations, nurtured for decades, lend themselves to potent writing.