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What Are We Doing Here?: Essays Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith.
Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexis de Tocqueville, inform our political consciousness or discussing how beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”
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“Addressing our current political climate, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Robinson, not unexpectedly, does so by considering how writers such as Emerson and Tocqueville have shaped our political thought, encouraging us to continue their tradition and play a role in ‘a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.’”
— Library Journal
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“Carrington MacDuffie brings her vocal skills and narrative art to this remarkable collection…MacDuffie’s elegant intonation comes through in these challenging and thought-provoking works. Her clear delivery gives shape to the complex arguments…Robinson’s brilliance illuminates this audiobook, and she could have no better narrator than MacDuffie.”
— AudioFile -
“With this volume, Robinson claims her place as an essential thinker—a modern, homebred Tocqueville—and offers a wake-up call for the soul, and for the nation.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine -
“Dwells on the current political and cultural climate, and defends the importance of the public university.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“As a grieving daughter, What Are We Doing Here? supplied me with the nourishing attention to beauty and grace that is everywhere present in Housekeeping and Gilead."
— Literary Hub -
“Robinson’s gorgeous, demanding, and enlightening essays, propelled by her intricate vision of unity, radiantly recharge both mind and soul.”
— Booklist -
“Trenchant essays about faith, values, and history, most delivered as lectures at religious institutions and universities from 2015 to 2017…Sharp, elegant cultural analysis.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“Robinson’s overall trajectory is clear and important. Her eloquent work stands up for a compassionate faith, the value of education, and a sense of decency.”
— Publishers Weekly
Awards
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A BuzzFeed Books Pick of Most Exciting New Books of 2018
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An Amazon Best Book of the Month in Nonfiction
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A BookRiot Pick of Must-Read February New Releases
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An Elle Magazine Pick for February 2018
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A Millions.com Pick of Most Anticipated February Books
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New York Times Pick for Books of the Times
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A Midwest Booksellers Association Pick for March
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of New Books We Recommend This Week
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An Oprah’s Book Club Selection
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An Audiofile Magazine “Best of the Year” Audiobook
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About Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is the author of numerous books, including Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack, a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.”
About Carrington MacDuffie
Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor and recording artist who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook, Many Things Invisible. Alongside her narration work, she has released a new album of original songs, Only an Angel.