Advertisements for Myself, a diverse and freewheeling tour through Mailer’s early career, covers the many subjects with which he’d grapple for the rest of his life: sex, race, politics, literature, and the systems of power that shape American life. There are lists, interviews, poems, confessions, postscripts, two Tables of Contents (one chronological, one thematic), undergraduate short stories, fragments from a one-act play—and of course, Mailer’s classic, groundbreaking essays, including “The White Negro (Superficial Reflections on the Hipster)â€, perhaps Mailer’s most prescient early polemic, and “Mind of an Outlawâ€, which lends its name to Mailer’s latest, and first posthumous, collection. A playful, unclassifiable snapshot of American culture at the end of the fifties, Advertisements for Myself, is also a cornerstone of Mailer’s long and prolific career: “In this volume,†declared The New York Times in 1959, “Mr. Mailer, at 36, shows once again that he is the most versatile if not the most significant talent of his generation.â€