Existential Despair

‘Existential Despair: A Guide to Sad Books is a manual for how to survive a culture that has replaced quality with quantity, relation with isolation, wisdom with platitudes, and the pleasure of learning with dull work. Justin McDaniel’s answer is a lively tour of sixteen books as urgent reading for the art of living’ – Siri Hustvedt
‘Brimming with moving reflections on some of the greatest literature you’ve never read. In an era when we’re starving for humanity, it’s the dose of the humanities that we desperately need’ – Adam Grant
Impassioned and timely, Justin McDaniel’s rousing and moving book stems from a simple but increasingly radical idea: that making time to read, to think, to be uncertain, to witness beauty, is something all of us need and deserve more than ever. In an era stuck with dull mantras of productivity and outputs, Existential Despair is a manifesto for being more present, more human. – Seán Hewitt

Justin McDaniel is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has won teaching and advising awards at Harvard University, Ohio University, the University of California, and the Ludwig Prize for Teaching at Penn.

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