In our era of rampant political and cultural pessimism, we run the risk of becoming bogged down in disillusionment and losing sight of ways out of the mire. In What Are We Doing Here?, the incomparable Marilynne Robinson offers us balm: impelling us to action, but offering us hope.Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and de Tocqueville inform our political consciousness, or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.What Are We Doing Here? is a call to continue the tradition of those great thinkers: to remake political and cultural life as 'deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity'.'A bracing, stringent book that continually challenges the reader' Telegraph New essays by the Orange and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gilead, Home and Lila. In this collection, Marilynne Robinson, one of today's most important thinkers - admired by President Obama, and so many others - impels us to action and offers us hope.