I will say straightaway what I most admire about this book. It’s the way the author is present in it, the way his voice informs the content and is informed by it. Although With Intent to Destroy is a personal book, the self does not intrude in the many bad ways it often can. It’s personal in the way real conversation is personal, made so by the presence in it of people who speak authoritatively from their experiences because, as Kierkegaard put it, they have lived their own life and no one else’s.