An Anxious Age

“A strikingly original diagnosis of the national moral condition. . . . Deftly analytical and also beautifully written, it has the head of Christopher Lasch and the heart of Flannery O’Connor. Anyone wishing to chart the deeper intellectual and religious currents of this American time, let alone anyone who purports to navigate them for the rest of the public, must first read and reckon with An Anxious Age.” (National Review, Mary Eberstadt)
 
“Provocative and profound. . . . With his exquisite, precise descriptions, . . . Joseph Bottum has changed the way we will look at American religion.” (Washington Times, Gerald Russello)
 
“The writing is so marvelous. Bottum’s chapter on John Paul II positively glitters. . . . His side-by-side profile of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and William F. Buckley Jr. says more about both men in a dozen pages than some books manage to convey. . . . The most interesting, accessible, and perceptive analysis of recent American religious history in years.” (The University Bookman, Geoffrey Kabaservice)
 
“An interpretive guide with great explanatory power. . . . James Burnham, Daniel Bell, Christopher Lasch, . . . with the publication of An Anxious Age, I wonder if these earlier thinkers haven’t all been surpassed. (The Week, Michael Brendan Dougherty)
 
“Joseph Bottum may be America’s best writer on religion. . . . [An Anxious Age is] a new and invaluable contribution to our understanding of America’s frame of mind, . . . a work of great importance that should be read, re-read and debated by the literate public, believers and non-believers alike.” (American Interest, David Goldman) 

“An Anxious Age is a remarkable work–bursting at the seams with ideas, insights, analyses and propositions about Protestantism and Catholicism, religion and America, God and man, past and present, the public sphere and our private lives. It is one heck of a book.” -William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard

“An Anxious Age is bound to be viewed as a classic of American sociology—not only because of its vast knowledge of historical facts and personalities, its depth and multiple layers of meaning, but also because of its literary elegance and imaginative structure. Bottum offers a wholly new way of understanding religion in public life today. His ‘Erie Canal Thesis’ about the history of American culture is brilliantly laid out, and the magical trick Bottum works when he asks, Where did the Protestant ethic go? is nearly breathtaking. Who would have guessed that the starchy morals of an older generation would evaporate so quickly—and yet later Christianity-less generations would still exude the same old assumption of moral superiority? Joseph Bottum stands among the nation’s most vivid and penetrating writers.” -Michael Novak, Winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize, Author of Writing from Left to Right