How do we live well? The first sentence of Grace and Gravity raises the fundamental question that constantly occupies our minds-and of all those who lived before us. Paradoxically, the impossibility of answering this question opens up the very room needed to find ways of living well. It is the gap where all disciplines fall short, where architecture does not fit its inhabitants, where economy is not based on shortage, where religion cannot be explained by its followers, and where technology works far beyond its own principles. According to Lars Spuybroek, the prize-winning former architect, this marks the point where the “paradoxical machine” of grace reveals its powers, a point where we “cannot say if we are moving or being moved”. Following the trail of grace leads him to a new form of analysis that transcends the age-old opposition between appearances and technology. Linking up a dazzling and often delightful variety of sources-monkeys, paintings, lamp posts, octopuses, tattoos, bleeding fingers, rose windows, robots, smart phones, spirits, saints, and fossils-with profound meditations on living, death, consciousness, and existence, Grace and Gravity offers an eye-opening provocation to a wide range of art historians, architects, theologians, anthropologists, artists, media theorists and philosophers.

'A powerful book from one of my favorite writers on something we all need more of...and could give more of.' — Ryan Holiday, bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy “Luminous. . . . A work to both devour and savour, Baird has, once again, written a book the world needs now.'”—Guardian From the bestselling author of Phosphorescence comes a beautiful and timely exploration of that most mysterious but necessary of human qualities: grace. Grace is hard to define. It can be found when we create ways to find meaning and dignity in connection with each other, building on our shared humanity, being kinder, bigger, better with each other. If, in its crudest interpretation, karma is getting what you deserve, then grace is the opposite: forgiving the unforgivable, favoring the undeserving, loving the unlovable. Sadly, we live in an era when grace is increasingly rare. Our growing distrust of the media, politicians, and each other has choked our ability to trust, to accept, to allow for mistakes, to forgive. What does grace look like in today’s world, and how do we recognize it, nurture it in ourselves and express it, even in the darkest of times? In this luminously beautiful, deeply insightful, and timely book, Baird explores the meaning of grace and how we can cut through negativity to find it today.

Desmond's sensitive readings of Heaney's poems through this new lens reveal previously unexplored depths in the work of the Nobel Prize-winning poet.