It’s hard to imagine a more opportune time to contemplate the lives we’re not leading. After five months of quarantine, however, finding the motivation to do so might be even harder. Where to begin? How to proceed? Luckily, Johns Hopkins English professor Andrew H. Miller has written the perfect guidebook to accompany us on this journey.

On Not Being Someone Else: Tales of Our Unled Lives, Miller’s third book and first for a general audience, is a thought-provoking blend of criticism and memoir as well as a page-turning introduction to literature and philosophy. “Thoughts of contingency are viral,” he writes:

Each of us no doubt could make a list: if my parents hadn’t moved . . . when I was young; if I had gone to a different college; if I hadn’t taken that one class with that one teacher; if [that particular relationship hadn’t ended]; . . . if I had taken another job . . . What would my life be like? What would I be like?

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