This Is Water

David Foster Wallace gave only one public talk setting out his outlook on life: the commencement address he delivered at Kenyon College on May 21, 2005. Little, Brown published it as a book in 2009, stretching the text across 138 pages. Wallace considers why empathy is hard, why it matters to be well-adjusted and how lonely adult life can seem. He argues that the real purpose of an education is learning to choose consciously how to perceive other people and how to think about meaning, and that the freedom it brings is the capacity to be fully aware and sympathetic. Time later ranked it among the best commencement speeches ever delivered.

James Clear put it on his list of the best nonfiction books.