In John Kaag’s recent book, “American Bloods: The Untamed Dynasty That Shaped a Nation,” the author traces the evolution of the American character through the members of one family. This is Kaag’s fourth book. The author is a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the publisher at the Rebind Publishing Group. He will give a virtual lecture Monday, Sept. 9, at 6 p.m., which is sponsored by the Boston-based genealogical organization American Ancestors. You can register here: https://hubs.americanancestors.org/american-bloods.
BOOKS: What are you reading?
KAAG: Brenda Wineapple’s “Keeping the Faith” for a review. I’d highly recommend it if you want an overview of the United States’s cultural history. I’m also reading Derren Brown’s “Happy,” about how misguided our contemporary notions of happiness are. I’m doing a project with Derren on Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations,” which I’m also reading. Most of my reading is work related but luckily my job allows me to read interesting books.
BOOKS: What do you read when you aren’t reading for work?
KAAG: I tend toward pre-1900 fiction and nonfiction. People think it is old fashioned but for me the classics are the original mindfulness app. I’m always interested in how old ideas can be enlivened in the present. That’s what I find valuable about going back to Dickens or Marcus Aurelius.
BOOKS: What was the first philosophy book you picked up?
KAAG: I read Thoreau’s “Walden” when I was 14. My older brother brought his college books home and left that one on the back of the toilet. I worshiped my brother so I wanted to read his books. When I finished “Walden,” my Latin teacher brought me up to Walden Pond and I swam around it. I told him I wanted to become a philosophy professor and live in Concord. And that came true.
BOOKS: What do you suggest someone new to philosophy read?
KAAG: One of the most accessible places to start is with Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus” and “The Rebel,” and his novels such as “The Stranger.” His books bring us into contact with the existential questions that underpin all philosophy. What is it to be human? What is our place in the universe? How do we create morality? I would also read T.Z. Lavine’s “From Socrates to Sartre.” That book introduced me to the history of philosophy in a digestible way. Then I’d read the ancients, such as the Platonic “Dialogues,” and then the stoics Seneca and Aurelius.
BOOKS: Which novels do a good job of addressing philosophical questions?
KAAG: Voltaire’s “Candide” is high on that list. It takes up questions of optimism, pessimism, and realism in a very sophisticated way and can be helpful in a society that vacillates between overblown optimism and depression.
BOOKS: What is the most difficult philosophy book you’ve read?
KAAG: Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus,” which is about the limits of language and understanding, pushed me to the absolute limit. There are also books that have impenetrable nuggets, like the first sentence of Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus.” “There’s but one philosophical question and this is suicide.” That has stuck with me since I was 17.
BOOKS: What is your home library like?
KAAG: After writing my first book I became obsessed with old libraries. I was luckily invited into a lot of personal libraries to help catalog or to purchase books. I collect primarily very old philosophy books in bad condition. I typically don’t fix them up. I love the idea of preserving something that has been and forgotten.
BOOKS: Do you have an all-time favorite?
KAAG: It was David Hume’s “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” which I found in a private library tucked under a shelf. This edition from the mid 1700s was bound in electrical tape. That book is the basis of modern empiricism and skepticism. I cherished it for many years until I finally let it go. It helped purchase our first apartment.
BOOKS: How do you see the role of reading in your life?
KAAG: We are all very narrow beings, just by virtue of our narrow perspectives. When you read you open a window to someone else’s mind, world, or imagination. Philosophers have long worried about the problem of other minds, that we don’t have access to each other’s thoughts and experiences, but books are the gateway to that other world.
Follow us on Facebook or Twitter @GlobeBiblio. Amy Sutherland is the author, most recently, of “Rescuing Penny Jane” and she can be reached at amysutherland@mac.com.