David Pennington

Basic dynamic in life: there is nothing meaningful enough to make you happy that could not make you sad if you lost it. This is the paradox of feeling, and it’s inherent and existential. If things inspire real positive emotion in you then they are necessarily things in which you are sufficiently invested that you would feel negative emotions when... See more

Attention is first philosophy—

Philosophy is not only a system of thought but a mode of attentiveness, an exercised openness to what exceeds us yet calls us to deeper participation. Its systematic aspects are downstream of this attentiveness, and can certainly become a scaffolding by which others can train their own attention, but it is at its root... See more

What we want in 2025

believe that we are in a period of story breakdown, an era that my teacher and mentor, Joanna Macy refers to as ‘The Great Unravelling’. As many stories that we held so dear in our near-recent human history are unravelling, the rates of mental health problems are rising. Things like “if I spend my life working hard everyday then I will be... See more

This doesn't mean all permissionless fabrications succeed. Most fail. But the right ideas almostalways start without permission. They have to, because permission systems are designed tofilter out anything that might change the status quo.This changes how we should approach problem solving.First, we must stop asking permission to solve problems we... See more

in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • National Bestseller • A brilliantly conceived and illuminating reconsideration of a key period in the life of Ernest Hemingway that will forever change the way he is perceived and understood.