The hero, if so he could be called, of "The History Man" is a predatory, unprincipled and ruthlessly fashionable sociologist, Dr. Kirk…. The description of the evolution of this representative contemporary figure, and of his equally representative wife Barbara, is a small narrative masterpiece, occupying one short chapter but spanning the changes of the last 15 years….

Bradbury writes brilliantly about the way in which our concepts of ourselves determine every detail of our lives—the clothes we wear, the food we purchase, the houses we live in, the people we choose to sleep with, the manner in which we sleep with them. One of the reasons why this novel is so immensely readable is its evocation of physical reality: it may be a book about ideas, but the ideas are embodied in closely observed details…. Consciousness of Freud enabled, indeed obliged novelists to dwell on the workings of...