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This book deepened my appreciation for all things Camus. Zaretsky writes lucidly, synthesizing information about Albert Camus and his philosophy from interviews, journals, essays, books, and letters. The book is slim, a marvel of precision and understanding.

For me, there is no use in summarizing its main points as any bulleted review by me would not offer the depth and complexity of Zaretsky's research about Camus, the pied-noir whose intellectual heroism and honesty is utterly stirring. It is wise to remember that he was writing incendiary anti-war articles and essays during the occupation of France in World War II - and it is also worth remembering his efforts on behalf of the tortured Arabs and Berbers of Algeria in a time when the "French people in Algeria" thought of the "Arabs as a shapeless mass without interests." Camus writes that the French must stop seeing "the Arabs of Algeria as a bloc, as a nation of murderers. The great majority of them, subjected to every possible ill, have known a kind of distress they alone can express." God, not much has changed.

If anything, A Life Worth Living proves the significance of Camus to the twenty-first century. I am reminded of Reinhold Niebuhr's book title, Moral Man & Immoral Society. To my mind, Albert Camus is that very rare speciman: a moral man.

The ending of the book is beautiful, a prayer for Camus who believed, not in God, but in beauty and justice.