Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
The essays in Against Everything are learned, original, highly
entertaining, and, from start to finish, dead serious, reinventing and
reinvigorating what intellectuals can be and say and do. Key topics are
the tyranny of exercise, the folly of food snobbery, the sexualization
of childhood (and everything else), the philosophical meaning of pop
music, the rise and fall of the hipster, the uses of reality TV, the
impact of protest movements, and the crisis of policing. Four of the
selections address, directly and unironically, the meaning of life--how
to find a philosophical stance to adopt toward one's self and the world.
Mark Greif manages to revivify the thought and spirit of the greatest of
American dissenters, Henry David Thoreau, for our time and historical
situation.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY:
The Guardian - The Atlantic - New York Magazine - San Francisco
Chronicle - Paris Review - National Post (Canada)
Longlisted for the 2017 PEN Diamonson-Spielvogel Award for the Art of
the Essay