Book excerpt: 'This is an extraordinary book, brilliantly conceived and beautifully written. Its approach to the well-worn subject of tragic drama is quite fresh. While Goodkin draws on the best of traditional scholarship in philosophy, classical philology, and literary criticism, he argues with an intellectual style that is entirely his own. Every reader will be stimulated in his own particular way-so great is the range and power of this book-to extend the book's argument toward or from his own area of interest.'-William Levitan, Princeton University