It's not the history and politics in this book that draws me (though some of it was quite useful, especially revisiting the banality of evil/good), as much as some of the secondary considerations: the use of personal narrative and conversation as a basis for writing intellectual history; the reflections on the task of the historian and the public intellectual; the reflections on the importance of writing well; and so on. I have a lot of notes scribbled in the back of my copy.