In « It All Adds Up », Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow takes readers on a brilliantly insightful journey through literary America over a forty-year period. In sentence after sentence, page after page, readers are offered brilliant perceptions and unusual insights into everyday life in America and the life of the mind. Moving from political figures like Roosevelt and Khrushchev to artists like Mozart, Dostoevsky, and John Cheever, from New York and Chicago to Paris—and including the deeply personal “Autobiography of Ideas”—Bellow, with great humor and wisdom, records the enduring thoughts and opinions of a lifetime of observation, thoughts that speak to us with renewed energy for our times.‎(éditeur)

Mozart: an overture Part one: riding off in all directions In the days of Mr. Roosevelt Literary notes on Khrushchev The French as Dostoyevsky saw them A talk with the Yellow Kid Part two: writers, intellectuals, politics The sealed treasure Facts that put fancy to flight White House and artists A matter of the soul An interview with myself Nobel lecture Writers, intellectuals, politics : mainly reminiscence Part three: the distracted public The Jefferson lectures The distracted public There is simply too much to think about Part four: thoughts in transition Spanish letter Illinois journey Israel: the six-day war New York: world-famous impossibility The day they signed the treaty My Paris Chicago : the city that was, the city that is Vermont : the good place Winter in Tuscany Part five: a few farewells Isaac Rosenfeld John Berryman John Cheever Allan Bloom William Arrowsmith Part six: impressions and notions A half life A second half life