“Truth may be unwanted, inconvenient, resented, mocked in all the best places—even harassed, suppressed, and forced underground. But that does not make it anything other than truth.”
Arriving on August 26, 2019
Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics
A bitter divisiveness afflicts America. To act “with malice toward none, with charity toward all” has become a faded ideal as citizens silo themselves into hyper-partisan tribes defined by politics, race, gender, and sexuality. The rancor of news pundits, the incivility of social media, and the storm of opposition to free speech on college campuses are symptoms of a fraying social fabric familiar to anyone with even a casual eye on current affairs.
Explanations of this discord have been offered from many quarters but have failed to get at its roots. To the dispassionate observer, the hostility between “tribes” seems simply irrational. But Mary Eberstadt, accomplished essayist and cultural critic, may have gotten to the bottom of it. Applying her peerless lens of analysis, she argues that the rise of identity politics is a direct result of the collapse of the family.
Her logic—backed by startling new data—runs as follows: humans from time immemorial have forged their identities within the structure of the traditional family. The family, in a real sense, is the first tribe. But with the decline of the family, generations of people have been set adrift and lack a firm sense of who they are. To fill the void, they shape their identity according to their membership in a politicized group, and their seemingly constant fury is, in fact, a primal scream for the familial root system of which they have been deprived.
Recent Books
How the West Really Lost God
“Absolutely brilliant.” – George Weigel
“Stunning.” – Rod Dreher
“Strikes far deeper into reality than any rival argument in the field.” – Michael Novak
Adam and Eve After the Pill
“Brilliant, serious work of the kind we’ve needed for decades.” – Joseph Bottum
“In this concise, elegantly written book, Mrs. Eberstadt marries brilliant analytical power with wry wit.” – The Washington Times
The Last Homily
“I hope [this book] will be a means of grace for people who did not know Fr. Arne personally and a fond reminder of his spiritual legacy for those of us who did” – Leonard A. Leo
“Cicero maintained that we do philosophy to learn how to die. Fr. Arne’s lesson is that ‘to die well is to teach others how to live.’ Thanks to Mary Eberstadt we can all learn Fr. Arne’s final lesson.” – John Garvey
It’s Dangerous to Believe
“A powerful new manifesto.” – Robert P. George
“A tour de force, essential reading.” – Jonathan Last, The Weekly Standard
The Loser Letters
“…[C.S.] Lewis now has a rival: The Loser Letters, by Mary Eberstadt…this is witty and wicked satire.” – Scot McKnight
“Eberstadt brilliantly defends the faith from radical New Atheism with wit and humor….more than a match for Hitchens and Dawkins and their flying spaghetti monster.” – Matthew Archbold, National Catholic Register
Home-Alone America
“Home-Alone America is a fine first salvo in what may be a changed war.” – Kelly Jane Torrance, Washington Times
“A book that should be read by every concerned parent, pastor, and policy maker.” – R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Assorted Essays and Reviews
Redeeming the Prodigal Father
Seen one way, Michael Brendan Dougherty’s My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son’s Search for Home, tells an old story: the primordial tale of a son’s search for his absent male parent. In this updated version, our Telemachus is an American, and Odysseus is an...
Why the Pro-Life Movement Will Live Long and Prosper
We’re asked today to reflect on the future of the pro-life movement in an increasingly secular age. A few years ago, I wrote a book called How the West Really Lost God, about the phenomenon called “secularization” and the various hypotheses about its roots. The book...
Eminem and Gandhi Are Right
The 45th annual March for Life in Washington arrives on the heels of one more Pew survey about declining faith—this latest indicating that only 4-in-10 Millennials think of Christmas as a religious holiday. All of which raises a new question for those gathering on the...
The Zealous Faith of Secularism
HOW THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION BECAME A DOGMA Begin with a sobering fact. During the past ten years, some of the sharpest observers of our time have come to believe that the tectonic plates underlying Western civilization have shifted momentously. One result is a deep,...
Where the Revolution Has Led: An Interview With Mary Eberstadt
Washington D.C., Nov 20, 2017 / 03:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic author Mary Eberstadt is a senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute, and the author of several best-selling books, including Adam and Eve After the Pill and How the West Really Lost God. In...
A Fisherman On K Street
This column is adapted from remarks delivered on October 26, 2017, at the Catholic Information Center dinner in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the honoring of former CIC director Rev. Arne Panula, who died on July 19, 2017, and was posthumously given the CIC’s...
Did You Ever Think You’d Known a Saint?
This morning, the funeral Mass for a priest named Fr. Arne Panula will be offered by Cardinal Donald Wuerl and others at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in downtown Washington, D.C. A former head of Opus Dei, U.S.A. who died of cancer earlier this week, and long one of the...
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