THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 9
EXPLANATION— the kind that
makes you reconsider what you
already know and marvel at what
you don’t — is an art. It is a fine
line between instruction and conde-
scension, sufficient detail and
superfluous minutiae. Listening to
these three new audiobooks, at
times I definitely felt like the poor
soul cornered by a crypto bro at
the bar, the freshman in the wrong
lecture hall. But there were also
moments when converging threads
came together in my own under-
standing — of my generation, of
human behavior and physiology —
and made any fleeting frustrations
worth it.
If this year’s Super Bowl half-
time show made you feel old, get
this: It’s been long enough since
the turn of the 21st century to
warrant an entire retrospective on
the peculiarities of the 1990s.
Chuck Klosterman reads THE
NINETIES: A Book (Penguin Audio, 12
hours, 39 minutes),a collection of
essays that hold a microscope to
everything from grunge and the
supposed apathy of Generation X
to the brief craze for Crystal Pepsi
(“There are many reasons not to
drink Pepsi, but ‘It’s too dark’ has
never been among them”). This is a
version of Klosterman I didn’t
immediately recognize. Whereas
his 2004 deep-dive into pop culture,
“Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs,”
blew my little high school mind
with its balance of cheekiness and
intelligence, “The Nineties” feels
almost academic. And sometimes
Klosterman is very much the afore-
mentioned insufferable guy at the
bar. Phrases like — and I swear
this is a real quote — “the tiramisu
of heteronormative befuddlement”
will delight some and alienate
others. And yet, I couldn’t stop
listening to find out which aspect of
my most formative decade he’d dig
into next. Overwriting aside, here
is a narrator who can make it
sound reasonable to draw a
straight line between the launch of
the Subaru Impreza and the re-
lease of Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”
WHILE THERE IS SOMEjoy to be
had in getting lost in the weeds,
there is also relief in being brought
back into the open air. For that,
turn to HOW TO BE PERFECT: The
Correct Answer to Every Moral Ques-
tion (Simon & Schuster Audio, 9 hours,
13 minutes), by Michael Schur, the
comedy writer and producer be-
hind shows like “The Office” and
“Parks and Recreation.” Down to
the musical cues and the audio cast
(which includes the actors Ted
Danson, Kristen Bell, Manny Jacin-
to and Jameela Jamil), “How to Be
Perfect” could be considered a
companion piece to the author’s
recent hit, “The Good Place.” Set in
an afterlife where frozen yogurt is
free and soul mates are guaran-
teed, the series was a result ofSchur’s own quest to better under-
stand morality. Philosophical con-
cepts from Aristotelian virtue
ethics to Kant’s categorical impera-
tive leaked into the show, but in
“How to Be Perfect,” Schur goes all
in on a single hypothesis: “If we
can get past the fact that a lot of
those philosophers wrote infuriat-
ingly dense prose that gives you an
instant tension headache, we might
arm ourselves with their theories... and be a bit better today than
we were yesterday.”
Unsurprisingly, “How to Be
Perfect” is very funny, his narra-
tion buoyed by interjections from
the show’s cast members. And it is
also very clear and approachable,
two adjectives I wouldn’t think to
apply to the field of philosophy.
Schur, who was fact-checked and
guided by the actual philosopher
Todd May, would be the first to
admit his summary of (mostly)
Western philosophy is far from
comprehensive — the audiobook
begins with an F.A.Q. that includes
various permutations of “Who the
hell do you think you are?” But
Schur also does what the Enlight-
enment thinkers cannot: bring
contemporary, real-world context
to these big ideas. The audiobook
had me thinking about my every-
day actions in new ways: how a
phone call to my mom may or may
not align with the southern African
principles of ubuntu, or what Thich
Nhat Hanh would think about my
listening to his mindfulness teach-
ings while completing three other
tasks. For someone like me, who
hasn’t considered questions like
“Should I punch my friend in the
face for no reason?” through a
theoretical lens, it’s a perfect start-
er course in analyzing why human
beings do what we do. I also
learned what the heck existential-
ism actually is.HARDER STILL THANparsing ethi-
cal contradictions is being con-
fronted with one of life’s great
pains and leaning into it. That’s
exactly what Florence Williams
does in HEARTBREAK: A Personal and
Scientific Journey (Pushkin Industries,
10 hours, 37 minutes). Reeling after
the end of her 25-year marriage
and seeking to understand the root
of that hurt, the journalist turns to
neuroscientists, therapists, fellow
sufferers and the great outdoors.
“To claw my way through heart-
break,” she says, “I would try to
awe my way through it.” Part
memoir, part medical investigation,
“Heartbreak” thrives as an audio-
book. Williams’s narration is inter-
spersed with recordings of her
conversations with lovers and
experts, as well as her own journal
entries, which are like getting a
tour of the restaurant kitchen —
seeing what the conclusions looked
like when they were still questions.
Along with the personal arc comes
a good deal of hard science that
reveals the connection between our
emotional and physical health —
how white blood cells can “listen
for loneliness,” for example, or how
the same areas of the brain light up
when we experience rejection and
when a cup of hot coffee is spilled
on our skin. Listeners will learn as
much from Williams’s intellectual
rigor as from her fearlessness in
surviving a broken heart. 0Explains a Lot
SEBASTIAN MODAKis the editor at
large at Lonely Planet and was The
Times’s 52 Places Traveler in 2019.
L ISTEN UP/AUDIOBOOKS/B Y SEBASTIAN MODAK
LIBBY VANDERPLOEG
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