Book reviews: ‘The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives and Divides Us’ and ‘Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor’

‘The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives and Divides Us’ by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

“Rebecca Newberger Goldstein isn’t the first philosopher to argue that we are driven by the quest to justify our existence,” said John Kaag in The Atlantic. But in her stirring new book, the accomplished author presents the pursuit of what she calls “mattering”—an idea she introduced in her 1983 novel, The Mind-Body Problem—as the human instinct that overrides all others. Seeking to pinpoint...