Isaac Newton, Michelangelo, Anne Rice, Barry Bonds, Haruki Murakami. They and countless others belong to a subculture that will never join hands, a group whose voices will never form a chorus. They are lones - and they have at least one thing in common: they keep to themselves. And they like it that way. In Party of One, Anneli Rufus delivers a long-overdue argument in praise of loners. Assembling evidence from diverse arenas of culture, Rufus recognizes loners as a vital force in world civilization rather than damaged goods who need to be "fized". A compelling , morally urgent tour de force, Party of One rebuts the prevailingnotion that aloneness is indistinguishable from loneliness, and that the only experiences that matter are shared ones.