A particularly effective and illuminating essay, "The Shi'a in Islamic History," exposes the repertory of ideas - rebellion, martyrdom, messianism and opposition to tyranny - that makes up the Shiite outlook on politics.

The nine admirably erudite and illuminating essays in "The Multiple Identities of the Middle East" discuss these difficulties.

As Hans Ottomeyer, director of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, writes in his illuminating essay in the catalog, vases were small, portable and intact relative to statues and buildings.

Major artists and institutions are given short but illuminating essays by dance writers from around the world.

Mentally as well as visually engaging, "In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O'Hara and American Art" deserves to be appreciated as a rich and illuminating cultural essay.

The show is accompanied by a museum-worthy catalog, one of whose illuminating essays traces the rise of Monet's reputation in America.

Mary Ann Caws' illuminating essay on the depiction of women in Surrealist art, 'Ladies Shot and Painted', is also included.

The participation of clean-cut, nonthreatening Tom Hanks helps immeasurably, as he is the first to graciously concede in this brilliantly illuminating and provocative essay.

But if Mr. Bloom's chapters on Rousseau and Shakespeare can be read on their own as provocative and illuminating essays, the book as a whole fails to hold the reader's attention.

An illuminating book-length essay that concerns many things, chief among them the author's struggle to bridge the gulf between himself and his father.