Michael McGirr's books and where to buy them

Learn about the books I’ve written or contributed to

Ideas to save Your Life
Now in paperback!
*Ideas to Save Your Life* follows Michael McGirr’s much-loved *Books that Saved My Life* (2018). This time, McGirr shares his love of philosophy, looking at the works of twenty eminent thinkers across history.
The book goes back to Pythagoras and comes forward to the contemporary Australian Frank Jackson; back to Mungo Woman and forward to Martha Nussbaum, by way of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. It is animated by two related questions: from where do we draw a sense of life’s purpose, and how can philosophy make life better? It ranges widely across subjects: from solitude to community, language to order, experience to ecstasy, the idea of good to that of a good idea.
McGirr’s approach is warm and inviting. Drawing on many years’ experience teaching philosophy to teenagers, he shares stories from his life and discusses how philosophers have shed light on them. *Ideas to Save Your Life* is often funny, but it is serious about philosophy. It makes the impenetrable accessible, the indescribable palpable, and invites you to change the way you see the world.
*PRAISE FOR MICHAEL MCGIRR AND IDEAS TO SAVE YOUR LIFE*
‘Michael McGirr is a bit of a twenty-first century alchemist with words: nothing is too deep to be made understandable, his aim is consolation and kindness always, and the result is often magic.’ Geraldine Doogue
*‘His anecdotes will make you laugh out loud. If you haven’t read any books by him before, seek them out.’ Good Reading Magazine*
*‘A wonderful excursion through a host of ideas and thinkers.’ Meredith Lake, ABC RN Soul Search*
*‘A tonic…A book to unscramble your brain and help refresh your perspective.’ Happy Mag*
‘A lively, often comic, narrative combined with a romp through some of the key ideas of ancient philosophy…What McGirr draws from the well of philosophy serves his purpose as a storyteller and a critic of society, and he leads us from the personal to the philosophical in an entertaining and often insightful way.’ Janna Thompson, Australian Book Review
*‘A bracing romp…Definitely add it to the Christmas list.’ Fullers Weekly*
‘McGirr’s survey of more than twenty major philosophers, including Socrates, Montaigne, William James, Simone Weil and Mary Midgley, is very much about which of their ideas retains authentic traction in a vocational life dedicated to making the world a more just and humane place…[This is an] erudite yet chatty collection of essays…New lights turned on for me as I read Ideas to Save Your Life. I’m thankful for the laughs too.’ Gregory Day, Age
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Books that Saved My LifeA book about the sheer joy of living, exploring forty texts that can enrich us in all manner of ways. Some are recent, such as Harry Potter; some ancient, such as Homer and Lao Tzu. There are memoirs (Nelson Mandela), poetry (Les Murray) and many of the world’s great novels, from George Eliot’s Middlemarch to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This book uses them to muse upon life in all its glorious complexity.Buy — Books that Saved My Life
A book about the sheer joy of living, exploring forty texts that can enrich us in all manner of ways. Some are recent, such as Harry Potter; some ancient, such as Homer and Lao Tzu. There are memoirs (Nelson Mandela), poetry (Les Murray) and many of the world’s great novels, from George Eliot’s *Middlemarch* to Toni Morrison’s *Beloved*. This book uses them to muse upon life in all its glorious complexity.
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Things You Get For Free
At the age of thirty-four, Michael McGirr decides to take his charming and inimitable mum on the honeymoon she and her late husband never got around to having. Between recounting their hilarious travels around Europe and meditating on the historical figures who dot their voyage — everyone from Hemingway to Michelangelo to the quietly heroic people who inspire McGirr’s special brand of faith — he plunges deep into his family history, unearthing sickness and depression but also moments of great love and perseverance.
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Bypass: the Story of a Road.

The Hume Highway runs from Sydney to Melbourne. Like all the great roads of the world, it is longer than it is wide. Flabby, unfit and forty, Michael McGirr decided to ride a pushbike from one end to the other. For most of his life, he had regarded the Hume as an obstacle to negotiate as quickly as possible. But Michael was discovering that middle age takes longer to do things.

Snooze: The Lost Art of Sleep.
In *Snooze*, McGirr delves into the mysterious world of sleep: its many benefits, its stubborn elusiveness and what our brains get up to while we’re in bed. He takes readers on a tour through the odd sleep patterns of some of history’s greatest figures, including Plato and Homer, Shakespeare and Dickens, Florence Nightingale (who slept a great deal) and Thomas Edison (who hardly slept at all).
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All I Have is Yours: Forty Days to Freedom.

The forty days of Lent prepare us to celebrate again the death and resurrection of Jesus, the heart of our faith and the source of our freedom. Throughout that time we too pray for the kind of freedom that allows God to work in our lives and the world: freedom from fear, freedom to forgive and, above all, freedom to love. Author, Michael McGirr, asks us to consider that choosing what we do in our lives is really about choosing the kind of people we want to be.

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Youth by J M Coetzee

Introduction by Michael McGirr

He has escaped South Africa. Everything is going well, he has attained his first goal, he ought to be happy. In fact, as the weeks pass, he finds himself more and more miserable.

In this unforgiving portrait of the artist as a young man, John flees his apartheid-riven homeland for the bleak London of the early 1960s, where he aspires to become a writer. There he becomes trapped in stultifying computer-programming work and brief, unsatisfying affairs, turning ever inwards in the struggle to realise his ambitions. Youth is the second of J. M. Coetzee’s masterly trio of autobiographical novels, Scenes from Provincial Life.

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