From the Heart: A Memoir and Meditation on a Vital Organ

What does it mean to have a heart? How does it feel when a heart fails, and what does it take to recover? In a world beset by never-ending crises--personal and collective, local and global--is heartlessness the only option?

From the Heart weaves together a personal narrative of a life-threatening ailment with considerations of philosophy, art, and science to contemplate ultimate questions: matters of life and death. Jeffrey L. Kosky recounts his brush with death--the surgical repair of a congenital defect in his aortic valve--his gradual recovery of everyday life, and his struggle to find the heart to go on throughout it all. To make sense of the experience, he immerses himself in humanistic inquiry and medical science--the histories of medicine, cardiac surgery, and knowledge of the human heart as well as the works of artists, writers, philosophers, and theologians. Writing about the experience of being human from the precarious position of his own woundedness, Kosky shares hard-earned perspectives on what matters most.

Combining moving memoir, encounters with major authors and artists, and heartfelt reflections on the ＂big questions＂ of existence, this elegantly written book is at once erudite and powerful. It shows us why the heart--in physical, emotional, and metaphorical senses--helps us come to terms with sickness and health, dying and living.

Jeffrey L. Kosky is professor of religion at Washington & Lee University. His books include Arts of Wonder: Enchanting Secularity (2013).