WHAT REALLY MATTERS

Pediatrician Saul, with journalist Cogdill, offers six tenets to help readers find fulfillment and pass it on.

The authors present a highly structured road map for readers navigating a society that often feels overwhelming, and who are eager to define for themselves “what really matters.” Saul roots his concept of what matters in six concepts: truth, trust, science, civility, diversity, and faith. To deeply consider these tenets, the authors assert, is to start defining individual and communal authenticity. Importantly, Saul and Cogdill take into consideration that each of these pillars may mean something different for each person in a diverse community, and they craft their language and many subsections accordingly. The book is replete with anecdotes that illustrate its broader argument; at times, these examples shape the book into a work that’s part self-help, part history lesson, particularly in a chapter on diversity. The book’s focus on examples results in the use of gray-boxed anecdotes that, while helpful, are sometimes unrelated to the content immediately surrounding them. It’s also unclear how much the authors have engaged with current literature in each section, outside of their discussions of science. For instance, a chapter on trust relies heavily on Pete Buttigieg’s Trust: America’s Best Chance and Michael Curry’s Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times (both published in 2020) to support its argument and cites no other literature. Such examples may leave readers wondering if the ideas presented in the book are new contributions to the field or not. Overall, however, the book usefully addresses the economic, political, and social upheavals of the 2020s.

A book that, at its best, may help readers get to the heart of what it means to be a good citizen.