In Extremis (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781963846454)

In these essays, originally written for the quarterly journal Exacting Clam, Jake Goldsmith dissects the foundations of our uneasy present with unflinching honesty and a "physiological urgency to have a say" driven by his experience of chronic life-threatening illness.Ranging from confronting what imperils us-the fragility of liberal democracy, the decline of universities, technological triumphalism, the decay of our common language-to what may sustain us-possibility, creativity, the aphorisms of Baltasar Gracián-to even the dubious pleasures of annoyance and the tendency to judge bookshelves, Goldsmith embraces the skeptical humanisms of Raymond Aron and Montaigne in a clear-eyed if necessarily fraught engagement with the world.These essays search for principle in an age of imposture and, rejecting easy formulas, ask what it might mean to live a considered life when body and body politic both are in a state of perpetual emergency.

Author: Jake Goldsmith
ISBN-10: 1963846451
ISBN-13: 9781963846454
Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press
Language: English
Published: 09/09/2025
Pages: 134
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.37lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.31d