Lincoln Kirstein (born 1907) is one of the most remarkable figures in the cultural history of the modern era, not only in the United States but anywhere, and the new collection of his writings, which has been edited by Nicholas Jenkins, is therefore certain to be of great interest in many respects.¹ If only for his role in bringing George Balanchine to America and founding the New York City Ballet, Mr. Kirstein would be guaranteed a place of high distinction in the annals of twentieth-century cultural life, but the scope of his achievements in the arts is far more extensive than that, of course. As a poet, as an editor, and as a writer in many fields—not only literature and dance but virtually all the visual and performing arts—he has made important and sometimes crucial contributions. He has been much involved, too, in the creation of institutions, in the codification of taste, and in the support of the artists he has believed in. He has been a patron and administrator as well as a critic, historian, and creator, and it is one of the virtues of this new Lincoln Kirstein Readerthat it brings together a sizable sampling of Mr. Kirstein’s essays in the various fields that have interested him as well as some of the autobiographical writings that illuminate the place these subjects have occupied in his own life. If the book does not finally tell us everything about Mr. Kirstein’s extraordinary career—it omits, for example,