Alberto Manguel approaches the question of, “Why are we together?” To which one answer is, what’s the alternative? But this is not an answer that quite satisfies. Indeed, Manguel doesn’t look for answers so much as ways of staying with the question, of spending time with stories that show how we are together, what that togetherness looks like, and what it requires of us, how it changes us. And, critically, how we are pulled apart, by whom, and to what ends. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Don Quixote, the myth of Cassandra, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, he finds that stories are where we understand our reality, where it exists today, and where it might change tomorrow.