The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity

A deeply personal literary memoir that explores what it means to live an authentic life in an increasingly detached and self-conscious world.

Incited by the feeling that the essence of the modern world is buried beneath the distractions of hype and melodrama, cultural critic Richard Todd began a personal search for authenticity, that elusive quality we often seek but seldom find. In The Thing Itself, Todd attempts to discover for himself a new way of thinking by asking the simple question: What is true in ourselves and the world around us?

With an exquisite eye for detail and an inquisitive spirit, Todd launches into an involving and elegantly crafted investigation of what makes an authentically lived life. As he focuses on an array of exchanges with people, objects, places, and ideasA-from the banal to the emotionally poignantA-Todd shows us that thereA's a great distance between what we can touch, feel, and see, and what interactions mean in our lives. Mining a rich and multifaceted store of modern philosophy and personal experiences, he inches closer to seeing himself and the world through a clearer set of eyes.

Engaging and readable, The Thing Itself offers unexpected insights into the very human search for meaning in our lives.

Richard Todd has spent many years as a magazine and book editor at The Atlantic Monthly, The New England Monthly, Worth, Civilization, and Houghton Mifflin, and he now works independently as a consultant. He has written scores of articles on a wide range of cultural themes for HarperA’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, CondAc Nast Traveler, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among others. He is a professor at Goucher College.