Steven Cassedy is the author of six previous books, including To the Other Shore: The Russian Jewish Intellectuals Who Came to America (Princeton, 1997), Dostoevsky's Religion (Stanford, 2005), and Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Stanford, 2014), which won a gold medal in US history at the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY). He retired as a Distinguished Professor of Literature and Associate Dean of the Graduate Division at the University of California, San Diego, in 2018 and now lives with his wife Patrice, a playwright, in Riverdale, Bronx.

"Steven Cassedy's What Do We Mean When We Talk About Meaning? is the most theoretical...He goes back to basics in examining where and when this slippery concept first emerged. The result is a truly groundbreaking piece of scholarship (and I say that as someone who has read a lot of books on this subject) as Cassedy locates the rot starting wtih German romanticism and spreading under today's self-help industry." -- Joe Humphreys, Irish Times

"Fascinating...an erudite account of the origins of the many facets of meaning currently associated with the use of the term meaning in such expressions as 'the meaning of life.'" -- CHOICE

"Overall, Cassedy displays an extraordinary breadth of acquaintance with numerous disciplines, from semantics to psychotherapy." -- John Saxbee, Former Bishop of Lincoln, Church Times

"Most people want to lead meaningful lives -- but what does the word 'meaning' really mean? In What Do We Mean When We Talk About Meaning?, Steven Cassedy gives readers a fascinating history of 'meaning,' tracing how it transformed from an ordinary word in the Middle Ages into the existentially weighty concept it is today. This erudite book reminds us that meaning is a fluid and mysterious concept -- but one that holds great power and promise." -- Emily Esfahani Smith, Author of The Power of Meaning

"A stimulating compound of wide-ranging intellectual history and striking linguistic erudition providing many new insights into its important subject." -- Jerrold Seigel, Professor Emeritus, New York University

"How did the words 'meaning' and 'life' become connected? Steven Cassedy's remarkable intellectual history provides the first comprehensive answer, by tracing the connection from the ancient world, to German Romanticism, to the Catholic Church's adoption of the language of 'meaning' in the 1960s. It's quite a story, very irreverently told, and once you know it you might not want a meaningful life anymore." -- James Tartaglia, Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, Keele University