Mark Edmundson

Biography

Mark Edmundson is the author of many books, including Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (Harvard, 2015) and Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game (Penguin, 2014). He is University Professor at the University of Virginia.

See Work

ESSAYS

If Everything Is So Amazing, Why’s Nobody Happy?

By Mark Edmundson

When I talk to my students about living for compassion, they tend to be quite interested. But few of them have ever contemplated this sort of life before. Like the life of courage and the life of thought, the life of compassion seems to be...

MEMOIR / Fall 2014

A Paint-Factory Education

By Mark Edmundson

The summer after my first year in college, I worked in a paint factory. Packard Paint was a small operation—no more than thirty people worked there—tucked away in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a city of about thirty thousand.