An ARTery Best Book of the Year
An Art of Manliness Best Book of the Year

In a culture that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, the desires of the individual self stand supreme, Mark Edmundson says. We spare little thought for the great ideals that once gave life meaning and worth. Self and Soul is an impassioned effort to defend the values of the Soul.

"An impassioned critique of Western society, a relentless assault on contemporary complacency, shallowness, competitiveness and self-regard...Throughout Self and Soul, Edmundson writes with a Thoreau-like incisiveness and fervor...[A] powerful, heartfelt book."
-Michael Dirda, Washington Post

"[Edmundson's] bold and ambitious new book is partly a demonstration of what a 'real education' in the humanities, inspired by the goal of 'human transformation' and devoted to taking writers seriously, might look like...[It] quietly sets out to challenge many educational pieties, most of the assumptions of recent literary studies-and his own chosen lifestyle."
-Mathew Reisz, Times Higher Education

"Edmundson delivers a welcome championing of humanistic ways of thinking and living."
-Kirkus Reviews

About the Author
Mark Edmundson is University Professor and Professor of English at the University of Virginia. A Guggenheim fellow, he is author of more than a dozen books, including Self and Soul, Why Teach? and Nightmare on Main Street.

Awards
Nominated for Rene Wellek Prize 2016 and Grawemeyer Award in Religion 2017 and Mark Lynton History Prize 2016.



Book Information
ISBN 9780674984004
Author Mark Edmundson
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Harvard University Press
Publisher Harvard University Press