A review by booktalkwithkarla
Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs

challenging informative slow-paced

4.25

The subtitle of this book is “A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind”. In this time in history, who would not want that? I raised my hand fast when this book was announced in MMD book club. My reading allocation and pace was much slower than my hand-raising. I am very glad I persisted. 

Alan Jacobs posits that engaging in conversation with the people of the past happens by engaging with the words of the past. In themed chapters Jacobs convinced me that the effort is worth it. To travel to the past and consider what the writers were experiencing offers understanding beyond quick judgments based on present knowledge and experiences. Of course. 

Some of the concepts that struck me most were information triage, books of the past as teachers, and keeping all of our values in play instead of only some of them. This is a book for the forever shelf - for its content and for its concepts - to remind me of why I desire to read old books. Learning from history affects the present and my imagining the future. We ignore this at our peril.