Existential Despair: A Guide to Sad Books

A provocative and transformative tour through literature as an insight into despair and how to understand it, and why the practice of reading is needed more than ever—based on the wildly popular UPenn course Existential Despair.

“This book is brimming with moving reflections on some of the greatest literature you’ve ever read. In an era when we’re starving for humanity, it’s the dose of the humanities that we desperately need.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Vibe and Think Again; host of the podcast Re:Thinking

Imagine a class that meets for eight hours once a week. There are no devices, just one book to read in silence and discuss with the group at the end. No prep. No papers. No final exams. Just read a book and think about it.

That’s exactly what University of Pennsylvania professor Justin McDaniel—former Buddhist monk and Guggenheim Fellow—asks of his students in Existential Despair, which perhaps ironically became the most popular course on campus. Drawing on this celebrated class, McDaniel now guides readers through sixteen weeks of radical reading designed to unsettle, transform, and restore.

With bracing candor and erudite analysis, Existential Despair introduces readers to modern classics of literature by James Baldwin, Carmen Maria Machado, Yukio Mishima, Ottessa Moshfegh, Paul Bowles, and others, exploring universal themes including childhood, longing, sex, loneliness, and death. Each chapter models McDaniel’s unconventional approach: reading entire novels in one sitting, grappling with discomfort, and practicing deep concentration free of distraction. This book is not a self-help manual, nor a path to quick fixes. Instead, it offers readers an opportunity to experience what hundreds of students already have: literature as a way to wrestle with grief, meaning, and survival.

As McDaniel writes, “This is not about hope or triumph—it’s about learning to live alongside despair.”

Existential Despair is an immersive reading experience that cultivates rigorous intellectual and personal engagement, a crash course in living with focus, intention, and presence of mind.

The book, Existential Despair: A Guide to Sad Books [Bulk, Wholesale, Quantity] ISBN#9798217087372 in Hardcover by Justin McDaniel may be ordered in bulk quantities. Minimum starts at 25 copies. Availability based on publisher status and quantity being ordered.