Theodore Richards
Theodore Richards (he/him) is an educator, poet, and philosopher, and the founder of The Chicago Wisdom Project. His work is dedicated to re-imagining education and creating new narratives about our place in the world. He has received degrees from various institutions, including the University of Chicago and The California Institute of Integral Studies, but has learned just as much studying the martial art of Bagua; teaching in various settings and students; and as a traveler from the Far East to the Middle East, from southern Africa to the South Pacific. He is the author of eight books and numerous literary awards, including two Nautilus Book Awards and three Independent Publisher Awards. He lives on the south side of Chicago with his wife and three daughters.
nonfiction
What Happened to Icarus
Encountering the Unfathomable in a World in Crisis
Trade paperback, ebook / April 2026
I want to know what happened to Icarus after his wings melted away, when he fell into the fathomless sea. This is where the story begins.
Ours is undeniably a world on fire. The seas are rising, forests burn, geopolitical strife accelerates, and our inner lives are increasingly unmoored, in collapse. Many of us no longer know our place in this world. Like Icarus, we are in free fall.Tracing the author’s travels through some of the most despairing, remote, and beautiful regions of the Earth, What Happened to Icarus suggests that perhaps our urge to fix, to mend, to search for surface-level solutions, isn’t what’s called for. Perhaps we must return to the depths to truly confront, in the tradition of the old stories of descent and return our inner landscapes as well as the world beyond. What Happened to Icarus is both a call to action and a call to remember—to remember who we are, so that we may fall in love with the world again, even as we despair in our descent.
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