A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
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Book Overview
A stirring defense of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time from an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author.
Not since the early twentieth century has liberalism, and liberals, been under such relentless attack, from both right and left. The crisis of democracy in our era has produced a crisis of faith in liberal institutions and, even worse, in liberal thought.
A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history -- and why, in an age of autocracy, our lives may depend on its continuation.
Not since the early twentieth century has liberalism, and liberals, been under such relentless attack, from both right and left. The crisis of democracy in our era has produced a crisis of faith in liberal institutions and, even worse, in liberal thought.
A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history -- and why, in an age of autocracy, our lives may depend on its continuation.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:154169936X
ISBN13:9781541699366
Release Date:May 2019
Publisher:Basic Books
Length:272 Pages
Weight:0.90 lbs.
Dimensions:1.0" x 5.8" x 8.5"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Amusing
Published by SRC in Minneapolis , 2 months ago
However, we are not amused. All over the map. No clear direction. He is either confused, or he is willfully intending to confuse his readers. He appears to think that all of the people in the world can be divided into two groups. Most people who I personally know, are skeptical about becoming associated with either of those two groups. I sure am skeptical. In his writings, there seems no wiggle room. Furthermore, his sentences are way too long. There is an old axiom in research that goes something like this: If you can't baffle them with BS, then stun them with statistics. There are no statistics in this book, so I am assuming that he is simply trying to baffle us. But wait, there's more. One of the best pieces of investing advice I ever received goes something like this: Never buy a car from somebody who is out of breath. Don't buy this car.
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