In this latest volume of Ig's popular Auteur series, New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond ( Candyfreak , Against Football ) examines the legacy of Ordinary People , Robert Redford's 1980 Oscar winning film, which he sees as a masterpiece of male vulnerability. Almond regards the film as a masterpiece of psychological drama, one of the few films that outshines its own literary source material. The film offered Almond and his brothers a private language, with which they could articulate anxieties and terrors that they couldn't always speak about openly, even as the children of two psychoanalysts. As a man struggling with the demise of his marriage, Almond sees the film as a kind of requiem for the happy, vibrant family he hoped to create. He also sees Ordinary People as a powerful reminder of the values that prevailed before a rising tide of American cruelty, which has celebrated masculine rage and violence as a means to power. The movie isn't just about a grieving family, but a nation that has surrendered its capacity to love openly, to mourn collectively, and to forgive.