Rebecca Newberger Goldstein argues that the need to matter is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest conflicts: the very crux of the human experience. Goldstein brings this profound idea to life through stories of people pursuing their unique mattering projects: the ragtime genius Scott Joplin, whose dedication to his ignored masterpiece, Treemonisha, ended in tragedy; an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned newborns; and a skinhead who as a young man dealt racial violence to feel he mattered but ultimately renounced that past. These portraits illuminate how our instinct for significance shapes identity, relationships, culture and conflict–and they point the way to a future where we might see there is enough mattering to go around. Deeply revealing and insightful, The Mattering Instinct is for those curious about why we seek to matter to ourselves and others–and how this insatiable longing that drives us apart may be the key to understanding each other.