Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts

This innovative essay collection explores the personal and civic function of humility from a range of popular and scholarly perspectives.

What does humility mean and why does it matter in an age of golden escalators and billionaire entrepreneurs? How can the cultivation of humility empower us to see success in failure, to fight against injustice, to stretch beyond our usual ways of thinking, and to foster a culture of listening in an age of digital shouting?

Edited by Rebekah Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek, Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts brings together contributions from scholars, psychologists, and artists to offer some answers to these questions. Contributions include:

• Charles M. Blow on Trump’s arrogance

• Lynette Clemetson on doing good journalism in an age of the attention economy

• Tyler Denmead on whiteness’s lack of humility

• Eranda Jayawickreme on learning how to admit what you don’t know.

Having witnessed the personal and civic costs of narcissism and arrogance, these and other writers consider humility as a valuable process a state of being with the power to impact institutions, systems, families, and individuals, and give voice to the ways in which humility is practiced in many ordinary but extraordinary actions.

This groundbreaking collection deserves a place in the library of anyone seeking alternatives to a culture of self-aggrandizing excess.