Jason Whitmarsh’s The Histories is an extravagantly funny and deeply affecting work of the imagination. With an obsessive precision, Whitmarsh catalogs our misunderstandings, our absurdities, our joys, and, above all, our sorrows. This is a world of stunning invention and lyric beauty: horsemen without horses, miniature Manhattan Projects, meditating kings and arguing gods, Wallace Stevens love songs and Kafka singing the blues. Though fragmented and incomplete, these histories get much of our experience—our hopes, our heartbreak—exactly right.