"Ah. That's how it is."

 I'd heard of Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs, and then someone returned a copy to the library today - I took it.

"I want to argue that you can't understand the place and time you're in by immersion; the opposite's true. You have to step out and away and back and forward, and you have to do it regularly. Then you come back to the here and now, and say: Ah. That's how it is."

The subtitle is: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind. I am also reading Hard Times, and a biography of James Madison, so it seems I'm on the right track.