[Quine] is at once the most elegant expounder of systematic logic in the older, pre-Gödelian style of Frege and Russell, the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank… This is an amazing feat of condensation with something solid to say in its brief scope about every major topic of interest in modern formal logic.

What [Quine] is expert in is, of course, logic… What [this book offers] is a view of the expert at work. Selected Logic Papers shows him actually doing logic… Logic is not a guide to life, but then Quine has never maintained that it was. It is a powerful adjunct to empirical inquiry, whose proper use requires prior discipline; its virtue lies in the fact that if we supply it with truth, it will never yield falsehood. Few have shown the manner of its use with more authority.

This book is of continuing, not just historical interest. Quine is the greatest American philosopher of the twentieth century. His work in logic is inseparable from his work in other parts of philosophy.