ERIC G. WILSON is the Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University. His previous book, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (2008), was a Los Angeles Times and Calgary Herald best seller and was featured on NBC’s Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, the BBC’s Today Programme, and CBC’s The Current. It was also featured or reviewed in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the Globe and Mail, among many others.