Mark Edmundson Knihy

After graduating from college in 1974, Mark Edmundson leaves Vermont to seek his destiny—a quest he knows involves rock and roll and America's high court of mischief and ambition, New York City. Shepherded by a carousing, Marx-quoting friend, he moves into a grungy apartment and embarks on a dream career lugging amps for rock's biggest stars: the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and the Allman Brothers. But as time wears on, Edmundson finds himself at odds with life in his adopted city and drifts through a regimen of late-night cab driving and radical politics, increasingly detached from the hopes he nursed back in school. Prodded and enlightened along the way by a cast of rogue mentors—his "Kings (and Queens) of Rock and Roll"—Edmundson checks out of New York and careens across the country in search of the elusive "it": the perfect vocation, his slightly crazy, ideal way of life.

Mark Edmundson finds in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself the evolution of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Breaking from the past literature he saw as “feudal”—obsessed with the noble and great—Whitman created a story of commonplace egalitarian selfhood, a story he lived as a hospital volunteer during the Civil War.

From one of America’s great professors, author of Why Teach? and Why Read?--an inspiring exploration of the importance of writing well, for creators, educators, students, and anyone who writes. Why write? Why write when it sometimes feels that so few people really read--read as if their lives might be changed by what they’re reading? Why write, when the world wants to be informed, not enlightened; to be entertained, not inspired? Writing is backbreaking, mindbreaking, lonely work. So why? Because writing, as celebrated professor Mark Edmundson explains, is one of the greatest human goods. Real writing can do what critic R. P. Blackmur said it could: add to the stock of available reality. Writing teaches us to think; it can bring our minds to birth. And once we’re at home with words, there are few more pleasurable human activities than writing. Because this is something he believes everyone ought to know, Edmundson offers us Why Write?, essential reading--both practical and inspiring--for anyone who yearns to be a writer, anyone who simply needs to know how to get an idea across, and anyone in between--in short, everyone.

Set in 1969, the story follows Mark Edmundson, a high school senior from a working-class background in Medford, Massachusetts. Initially uninterested in academics and focused on football, his life takes a transformative turn when an unconventional philosophy teacher inspires him to rethink his future, steering him away from a factory job and towards a new path of self-discovery and intellectual curiosity.

Suitable for novices and skilled woodworkers, this book teaches them how to make cabinet-based projects such as a bathroom vanity; furniture projects including a dresser, daybed, and bookcase/storage unit; and smaller projects such as a picture frame/mirror and an end table.

In a culture of the Self that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, we spare little thought for the great ideals courage, contemplation, and compassion that once gave life meaning. Here, Mark Edmundson makes an impassioned attempt to defend the value of these ancient ideals and to resurrect Soul in the modern world.

From one of America's great professors, a collection of works exploring the importance of reading, writing, and teaching well, for anyone invested in the future of the humanities. A renowned professor of English at the University of Virginia, Mark Edmundson has devoted his career to tough-minded yet optimistic advocacy for the humanities. He argues for the importance of reading and writing to an examined and fruitful life and affirms the invaluable role of teachers in opening up fresh paths for their students. In his series of books Why Read?, Why Teach?, and Why Write? Edmundson explored the vital worldly roles of reading, teaching, and writing, earning a vocal following of writers, teachers, and scholars at the top of their fields, from novelist Tom Perrotta to critics Laura Kipnis and J. Hillis Miller. Now for the first time The Heart of the Humanities collects into one volume this triad of impassioned arguments, including an introduction from the author on the value of education in the present and for the future. The perfect gift for students, recent graduates, writers, teachers, and anyone interested in education and the life of the mind, this omnibus edition will make a powerful and timely case for strengthening the humanities both in schools and in our society.

How Freud's concept of the super-ego can help us to understand the harsh cultural climate of the digital age