How We Want to Live

In 17 thoughtful essays--edited by the novelist Susan Richards Shreve and her son, the writer and University of Michigan instructor Porter Shreve--How We Want to Live follows up their 1997 anthology, Outside the Law: Narratives on Justice in America, with another eclectic, distinguished collection of authors--this time, defining the concept of progress as it pertains to their lives. More often than not, each author concludes that Western culture's idea of progress actually leads to regression, as we lose touch with each other, hide behind our computer and TV screens and windshields, and rely on modern conveniences to shield us from intimacy. In his own contribution, "Made by You," Porter Shreve searches to find a birthday gift for his youngest sister. He walks down a block previously filled with independently owned stores, only to find an antiseptic mall. Deborah Tannen, author of the bestselling You Just Don't Understand, considers the benefits and the shortfalls of online communication when she begins an intimate e-mail correspondence with an old college friend dying of lung cancer. And Shawn Wong explains his struggle to assert his American identity as a U.S.-born Chinese man. The tone varies from the cynical (Ishmael Reed's essay "Progress: A Faustian Bargain") to the wonderfully poignant (Pearl Abraham's "Lost Souls"), but the essays are always well wrought, inspiring readers to extend the question of the meaning of progress to their own lives. --Kera Bolonik