Books and authors

Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Heitman highlights Prof. Alan Lightman’s book, “The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science.” Heitman writes Lightman’s “gift for distilling complex ideas and emotions to their bright essence quickly wins the day.” He adds that Lightman “belongs to a noble tradition of science writers, including Oliver Sacks and Lewis Thomas, who can poke endlessly into a subject and, in spite of their prodding, or perhaps because of it, stir up fresh embers of wonder.”

New York Times reporter Thomas May spotlights Prof. Tod Machover’s chamber opera “Overstory Overture,” based on Richard Powers’s novel “The Overstory.” May notes that Machover “has developed novel approaches to electronics and is a trailblazer in the applications of artificial intelligence to music.” Of his desire to create an operatic adaptation of Powers’s book, Machover explains, “I’ve always wanted to write a theatrical work with many strands that come together in an unusual way.”

Prof. Kieran Setiya reviews “And Finally: Matters of Life and Death” by Henry Marsh for The New York Times. “Many years ago, Marsh read philosophy at Oxford University, but he left for the more practical world of medicine after a year,” writes Setiya. “He finds himself returning in this book to philosophical questions about consciousness and fear of death, though he does so through narrative, not argument, his skills honed by years of storytelling as a clinician recounting case histories.”

Financial Times reporter Jonathan Derbyshire spotlights “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” by Prof. Kieran Setiya. “But that doesn’t mean either that ‘Life Is Hard’ is a self-help book, and it’s all the better and more interesting for it,” writes Derbyshire. “Setiya warns readers at the outset that they are not going to find in it ‘five tips for overcoming grief’ or ‘how to succeed without even trying.’”

Prof. Kieran Setiya’s book “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way,” has been named one of The Economist’s best books of 2022. In the book, Setiya makes the case that “suffering need not dimmish or spoil a good life,” writes The Economist.

The Atlantic highlights a section of Prof. Alan Lightman’s forthcoming book, “The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science.” Lightman writes, “I call myself a spiritual materialist. As a scientist, I’m a materialist. Not in the sense of seeking happiness in cars and nice clothes, but in the literal sense of the word: the belief that everything is made out of atoms and molecules, and nothing more. Further, I believe that the material stuff of the universe is governed by a small number of fundamental laws. Yet I have had transcendent experiences.”

“Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It” by Prof. Amy Finkelstein, Boston University Prof. Ray Fisman, and Stanford University Prof. Liran Einav was named one of the best economics books of 2022 reports Martin Wolf for Financial Times.

University of South Carolina Prof. Jennifer A. Frey reviews Prof. Kiernan Setiya’s new book “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” for The Wall Street Journal. Frey writes that Setiya's analysis "combines philosophical arguments and personal reflections on his own experience. He offers this in the hope that it will help readers better understand their own suffering and perhaps ease the weight of it." 

Writing for The Guardian, Prof. Kieran Setiya explores the pursuit of happiness. “What, then, should we strive for? Not happiness or an ideal life, but to find sufficient meaning in the world that we are glad to be alive, and to cope with grace when life is hard,” writes Setiya. “We won’t achieve perfection, but our lives may be good enough.”

Prof. Kieran Setiya’s new book, “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way,” is a “lovely, empathetic book,” writes Boston Globe reporter Meredith Goldstein. In a discussion with Goldstein about self-help and philosophy, Setiya noted that in his view “the ideal form of engagement with philosophy is active rather than passive.”

Prof. David Kaiser discussed the significance of Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger’s research conducting experiments concerning quantum entanglement, for which they were honored with the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. “Clauser got a lot of pushback from scientists who didn’t think this was even part of science,” said Kaiser. “He had to have a lot of stick-to-itiveness to publish his result.”

In a review for The New York Times, University of Bonn Prof. Irina Dumitrescu spotlights Prof. Kieran Setiya’s new book “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” Dumitrescu writes: “Setiya’s main goal is not to describe how things should be; in his view, given that there is much in life that makes us miserable, and that we can neither change nor ignore, we might as well find ways of dealing with the reality.”

In his new book, “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way,” Prof. Kieran Setiya “aims to show how living well and hardship can go together,” reports The Economist. “Attentive readers of this humane, intelligent book will come away with a firmer grasp and better descriptions of whatever it is that ails them or those they cherish.”

Boston Globe reporter Kate Tuttle spotlights Prof. Kieran Setiya’s new book, “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way,” which provides “a road map for thinking about life through trials both mundane and catastrophic.” Says Setiya: “You can’t really approach life without hope. The question isn’t really whether we should hope or whether hope is good, it’s always what should we hope for.”

Los Angeles Times book critic Bethanne Patrick spotlights Prof. Kieran Setiya’s new book“Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way.” Patrick writes that Setiya’s book demonstrates how “philosophy contains equipment that can help you survive and find renewed hope, if you know how to use it.”