From the author of HOW TO THINK and THE PLEASURES OF READING IN AN AGE OF DISTRACTION, a literary guide to engaging with the voices of the past to stay sane in the present
W.H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise BREAKING BREAD WITH THE DEAD, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present-and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our "personal density."
Today we are battling too much information, a society changing at lightning speed, algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought-plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore. The modern solution to our problems is to surround ourselves only with what we know and what brings us instant comfort. Jacobs' answer is the opposite: to be in conversation with, and to be...