All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age

Dreyfus and Kelly re-evaluate such classics as Melville's Moby Dick, Homer's Odyssey, and Dante's Divine Comedy to give modern readers a sense of "the wonder we were once capable of." The authors do not push to recover religion but rather to repossess the moods and intensity of the ancient Greeks and shrug off what they perceive to be the present age's epidemic of apathy and nihilism. By juxtaposing canonized authors with David Foster Wallace%E2%80%94and even Elizabeth Gilbert%E2%80%94Dreyfus and Kelly explain, expand, and give direction in how to live in a secular age. David Drummond's voice sounds both famous and familiar%E2%80%94as if constantly narrating a movie trailer. As professional as he sounds, over long periods of time it becomes difficult to decipher what is urgent and important when everything sounds so portentous, and movements between chapters and jumps between authors make the listening tricky; it's not always easy to discern where the argument is going and from where it originated without pages to reference. A Free Press hardcover. (Apr.)