A Good Man in the Woods - and other essays

Mohammad Badruol Ahsan's 'A Good Man in the Woods - and other essays' is a collection of columns that carries on the tradition of examining life, a pursuit that goes back to Socrates' famous claim that an unexamined life is not worth living. Like the paper we pick up from the ground or the blood cell studied under a microscope, each essay is an attempt to understand the world one small piece at a time.

The author's limitless curiosity about life led him to write on an astonishingly wide range of topics, from the death of a man to the future of the country to the US invasion of Iraq. What ties these diverse pieces together is his unwavering faith in the inherent goodness of people. Reading the book feels like a kaleidoscopic journey, where each turn of the page brings a new scene, a new question, and a fresh perspective.

The collection includes forty-eight essays with titles like "The Leprechaun", "God and Truth", "The Prisoner of Tikrit", "The Old Man and I", and "A Good Man in the Woods". After each reading, one cannot help but miss that goodness in the world and yearn for it. This book will leave readers thinking, perhaps even questioning some fundamental assumptions they had never examined before.