""Naming and Necessity," is lucidly, inventively and even playfully argued -- it's actually a transcription of three lectures Kripke gave, extemporaneously and without notes, at Princeton in January 1970 -- hence its lovely conversational tone. Ranging over deep matters like metaphysical necessity, the a priori and the mind-body problem, Kripke proceeds by way of a dazzling series of examples involving Salvador Dalí and Sir Walter Scott, the standard meter stick in Paris, Richard Nixon (plus David Fry’s impersonation of him), and an identity-like logical relation Kripke calls "schmidentity." There is not a dogmatic or pompous word in the lectures -- and not a dull one either. Kripke the analytic philosopher reveals himself to be a literary stylist of the first water." - Adriano