I’m not a very interesting person. That’s why I was excited to read Jessica Hagy‘s altogether indispensable “How to Be Interesting,” an upbeat guide to injecting more whimsy into your everyday. In a sentence or two, its pithy life lessons manage to paint deceptively simple diagrams and graphs that nudge you out of your … Read more
Do you want to make the world a better place? Inequality, the slow pace of scientific discovery, and the lack of action on climate change are some of the things that you can affect if you have enough resources. But how do you do it? Enter “How to Spend a Trillion Dollars,” the ultimate thought … Read more
The best literary works often arise from an author’s personal tragedy. Such is “A Grief Observed,” a book that shows how loss can unravel your entire life. C. S. Lewis (November 29, 1898– November 22, 1963) wrote it after losing his wife, Joy Davidman, to cancer. At the time of her death, they had been … Read more
“It has often been remarked that there is a side at which genius and madness touch, and even pass over into each other, and indeed poetical inspiration has been called a kind of madness: ‘amabilis insania,’ Horace calls it,” Arthur Schopenhauer famously wrote in “The World as Will and Representation.” Poetic amabilis insania descended on … Read more