"At a time when the emotions, no matter how differently construed, are regularly celebrated for the knowledge and agency they are supposed to afford, Cameron’s book presents a salutary counterpoint. In a series of powerful essays, she explores how a surprising cluster of writers, from Emerson and Melville to William Empson and Simone Weil, aspires to emotion-cancelling impersonality. My favorite chapter explains why the Puritan author Jonathan Edwards turned against his own religious enthusiasm and encouraged his readers to 'think of the same that the sleeping rocks dream of.'"