But to look at this as a stand-alone literary work:most of the essays poorly break some rules that make the arguments fall flat or the writing feel disjointed.

Here, Puschak attempts to decipher why Peter Jackson’s LOTR franchise holds up so well, deciding that it must be Puschak’s own “longing for reality as I want it to be”: a world where every person has been assigned a vital role in mythology, a place where all prophecies are fulfilled and where sacred objects are the stuff of destiny.Caring about something so deeply felt rebellious, and that’s the place where Emerson gave me permission to care. What makes this essay so great is how he captures an experience that I — and I suspect many others — have felt. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, best-selling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale - from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.

I did the least amount of work necessary to cross the checkpoints and not be a disappointment to my family. Whether you’re interested in the philosophy of Jerry Seinfeld or how Clark Kent is the real hero, there’s something for everyone in this effervescent collection.The title, in retrospect, seems to be ironic as one of the things Puschak states is that he doesn't believe there is any meaning to anything. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate—no more. A pioneer of the “video essay” format, his YouTube videos — in which he critiques fine art, film, literature and more — have more than 223 million views. People of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years.

He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. In The Artisan Soul, Erwin Raphael McManus, author, thought leader, and founder of MOSAIC in Los Angeles, pens a manifesto for human creativity and the beginning of a new renaissance. Puschak reads like a young Oliver Sacks at times -- no small compliment -- and his reflections can be similarly elegant and masterly.

That, or I brushed him off as a dreary old statue of a man, who, from his high perch in the American Pantheon, had little to say to someone like me.