The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning - Hardcover

Trachtenberg, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316158798 ISBN 13: 9780316158794

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2008

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 Trachtenberg tells 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.

About this title

From the Author:

Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society's 2009 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for a significant contribution to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0316158798
• ISBN 13: 9780316158794
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464