How We Want to Live: Narratives on Progress

by Porter Shreve

How should we live? Is progress a blessing or a curse? How do technology, gender and race identity, choice, and freedom affect our values? Can we be true to our ideals? This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807045101
• ISBN13: 9780807045107
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A terrific mix of personal insight and social commentary!

Before I read this book I read the two previous readers' reviews, which made me approach the book with great curiosity (and even a little ambivalence). Happily, I would like to report that I was delighted and surprised by these essays; they are written so well, so beautifully-- really a pleasure to read and to be intellectually provoked at the same time. I especially love how personal these essays are; it's not the usual didactic fretting about the postmodern technological age. Here, people write about how their lives truly are affected by the various kinds of "progress" (the word itself is contemplated wonderfully) in America today. An admirable book!

Truly compelling, thought-provoking, well-written

I was moved and fascinated by these essays which engage the idea of progress with depth, emotion, and insight. "Made by You" by Porter Shreve and "The Wreck of Time" by Annie Dillard were my favorites, though all the essays were fresh, absorbing. This is an important book.