The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity

Richard Todd sets out on a long personal quest to find something real in a world that often feels hollow. Worried that so much of modern life is staged or fake, he turns his attention to physical places and everyday objects, then to public affairs and abstract ideas, and finally to his own sense of self. Part memoir, part wide-ranging reflection, the book follows his attempts to grasp what it means to be a genuine person living in a genuine world, and asks whether such authenticity can be found at all.