The Book of Calamities
Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning
Trachtenberg, Peter
Hardcover
List Price: $23.99
booksXYZ price: $16.55
$0.83 of your order (5%) will be donated to the school of your choice.
VIEW MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS ONE
Submit a book review
BOOK SYNOPSIS
What does it mean to suffer? What enables some people to emerge from tragedy while others are spiritually crushed by it? Why do so many Americans think of suffering as something that happens to other people-who usually deserve it? These are some of the questions at the heart of this powerful book. Combining reportage, personal narrative, and moral philosophy,Peter Trachtenbergtells the stories of grass-roots genocide tribunals in Rwanda and tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka, an innocent man on death row, and a family bereaved on 9/11. He examines texts from the Book of Job to the Bodhicharyavatara and the writings of Simone Weil. THE BOOK OF CALAMITIES is a provocative and sweeping look at one of the biggest paradoxes of the human condition--and the surprising strength and resilience of those who are forced to confront it.
AUTHOR BIO
Peter Trachtenberg's essays and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, TriQuarterly, Bomb, the Jewish Forward, and Chicago, and have been broadcast on NPR's "All Things Considered." He received the Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction and the Jerome Lowell DeJur Award for Fiction from the City College of New York. He has taught at Brown University, The New School, Johns Hopkins, NYU, the School of Visual Arts, and City College of New York. He lives in Rhinebeck, New York with his wife, Mary Gaitskill.
BOOK REVIEWS
"Frank and urgent....Trachtenberg raises complex questions about justice, malice, compassion, blame, self-pity, personal responsibility, faith, and doubt....He harvests wisdom from the likes of Primo Levi, Siddhartha, and Simone Weil, from Aeschylus's Oresteia and the book of Job."
FOR RELATED BOOKS
Literary Collections Books :: Essays Books
Philosophy Books :: General Books
Psychology Books :: Emotions Books
Social Science Books :: Sociology Books :: General Books
MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 0316158798
ISBN(13-digit): 9780316158794
Dewey Decimal: 128/.4
Library of Congress: 2008013351
Book Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 450
Paper Weight (lb): 1.28 lb
If you like this book, you may also enjoy:
