This is a fairly amazing set of essays that I will re-read at least once, if not twice. ( )

Just how blinkered is political reactionism? Very. In this short volume, Lilla gives us an overview of the movement's history and its fallacious notions. Worth the read even if it weren't so timely. Given the reactionary forces at work in the world today, it's practically mandatory. ( )

Marvelous little book describing the common myth of people and movements that want in some way to live in the past. The mind is not wrecked but it believes it used to be on a ship that was wrecked. I was unfamiliar with many of the case studies but the point still comes across.

The best non-fiction book I've read in a long while...

I picked this book up after reading the author's article in the NYTimes Book Review section, The End of Identity Liberalism in which Lilla offhandedly offers a withering critique of the absurd reception of JD Vance's memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

As luck would have it, I had recently started Houellebecq's Submission which is critiqued within the pages of Shipwrecked.

Submission and Shipwrecked should be read simultaneously. If it weren't for the pain of reading Elegy I would have missed out on the the pleasure of reading Lilla and Houellebecq in the same breath.

So now you know the recipe to expanding yourself into a goodread mindfuck.

You're welcome. ( )

While I rate books to the half point (do you?) Lilla's book, for me is a solid 4. I also believe in, and rank my weightings in a binomial distribution, with no rated book getting lower than a 2.5.

In any case, I read The Shipwrecked Mind as an antidote to my creeping anxiety over Tuesday's election.

On that score, I'm now prepared to read, say Leo Strauss, whose U of Chicago credentials, and his acknowledged worship by the reactionary right in this country would have scared me off prior to this read.

Of my six grandchildren, half are in Jewish lineage. Lilla's treatment of Franz Rosenzweig lifts my spirits to understand that part of their inheritance. His treatment of the Jewish and Christian places in history, and especially how each regards that place was illuminating and hopeful. He leads us through Rosenzweig's 'The Star of Redemption'.. " and by far the richest, is a startling sociological comparison of Jewish and Christian ways of life". This is immediately followed by (unsurprisingly, when we encounter it) "Rosenzweig dismisses Islam as a mere parody of revealed religion".

My only disappointment was his concluding chapter when he serializes columns he wrote for the NY Review of Books while he was in Paris in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, 2015. He introduces French writers, Eric Zemmour and Michel Houellebecq, the latter who was fortunate (as France was not) to have a book come out on the eve of the attacks. His review helps to understand the French struggle with their own history. At the moment, I can't give this sufficient energy to be interested.

As a reader's guide, I've prepared a little page here: http://mcgowans.org/marty3/commonplace/idea/shipwreckedmind.html, which I'll use to tour some of the influential philosophers and authors he cites. ( )