Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us

The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us

Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger

Hardcover

PhilosophyCognition

Publisher Price: $29.99

ISBN10: 1324096853
ISBN13: 9781324096856
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: Jan 13 2026
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.35
Height: 1.30 Width: 6.30 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex and The Mind-Body Problem, returns with a revelatory book about the primal drive that in our species alone has been transformed into one of our most persistent and universal motivations: the longing to matter.

Drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, Goldstein argues that this need to matter--and the various mattering projects it inspires--is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest conflicts: the very crux of the human experience.

Goldstein brings this profound idea to life through unforgettable stories of famous and not-so-famous people pursuing their unique mattering projects: the ragtime genius Scott Joplin, whose dedication to his ignored masterpiece, Treemonisha, ended in tragedy; the pioneering psychologist William James, who rose above the depression of his young adulthood to become perhaps the first great theorist of mattering; an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned newborns from the trash; and a neo-Nazi skinhead who as a young man dealt racial violence to feel he mattered but ultimately renounced that hateful past after realizing that mattering isn't a zero-sum game. These portraits illuminate how our instinct for significance shapes identity, relationships, culture, and conflict--and they point the way to a future where we all might see that there is, fundamentally, enough mattering to go around.

Deeply revealing and insightful, and decades in the making, The Mattering Instinct is a must read for those curious about why we seek to matter to ourselves and others--and how this insatiable longing that drives us apart may be the key to finally understanding each other.

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