The Book of Calamities: Five Questions about Suffering and Its Meaning by Peter Trachtenberg explores the nature of things such as adversity, hurt, loss, illness, and death to find the lessons (if any) that humans take away from them.
As the author points out in the Introduction, “Everybody suffers, but Americans have the peculiar delusion that they’re exempt from suffering.” … Maybe that is why it is harder on us when it does come.
Trachtenberg masterfully weaves together his own philosophical as well as personal questions with great stories from fiction and real life. It’s a heavy read, but well written.
