Overview

The Sunday Times Bestseller 'Provides a way of understanding what happened to us that preserves the humanity of all parties and points the way forward toward renewal' Jonathan Haidt 'Makes moral and cultural sense of a profoundly perplexing time... This is an essential book' Yuval Levin Painting a clear and detailed picture of the ideas and events that have paved the way for the dramatic paradigm shift in social justice that has taken place over the past few years, Thomas Chatterton Williams provides an incisive, culturally observant analysis of the evolving mores, manners and taboos of social justice orthodoxy. Exploring what has shaped the ways we think about diversity and freedom of expression, Williams unravels the ideology of critical race theory. Examining the rise of an oppressive social media, the fall from Obama to Trump and the twinned crises of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, he documents the extent to which these events have altered the ambient language and culture we use to make sense of our daily lives. Showing how liberalism - the very foundation of an open and vibrant society - is experiencing an existential crisis, under assault from the right and the left, this is an essential and compelling examination of our place in a radically changing world.

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9781408724422

Table of Contents

Reviews

Even when I disagree, I admire those 'Hard-Headed Negroes,' like Thomas Chatterton Williams, who have the mettle and tenacity to challenge orthodoxy, often risking censure by their contemporaries for daring to speak their minds. Thomas Chatterton Williams has taken his place among these brilliant dissenters -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Distinguished Professor, Harvard University Mass insanity broke out among America's elites in the summer of 2020, with devastating consequences for America's knowledge-creating institutions. Thomas Chatterton Williams is one of the few intellectuals who stood firm and made the case with great courage for liberal values and the free exchange of ideas. In Summer of our Discontent, he returns with a gift: a way of understanding what happened to us that preserves the humanity of all parties and points the way forward toward renewal -- Jonathan Haidt, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Anxious Generation Thomas Chatterton Williams uses a fiercely probing intelligence, instinctively dissatisfied with absolutist explanations, to explore without ideological blindfolds what happened in one momentous summer. Camus would have liked this book -- Adam Gopnik, bestselling author of The Real Work Thomas Chatterton Williams manages to make moral and cultural sense of a profoundly perplexing time. By seeing clearly, reflecting honestly, writing with real power and style, and beginning from the premise that no faction is entirely right or entirely wrong, he offers genuine illumination. This is an essential book -- Yuval Levin, author of American Covenant

Even when I disagree, I admire those 'Hard-Headed Negroes,' like Thomas Chatterton Williams, who have the mettle and tenacity to challenge orthodoxy, often risking censure by their contemporaries for daring to speak their minds. Thomas Chatterton Williams has taken his place among these brilliant dissenters -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Distinguished Professor, Harvard University Mass insanity broke out among America's elites in the summer of 2020, with devastating consequences for America's knowledge-creating institutions. Thomas Chatterton Williams is one of the few intellectuals who stood firm and made the case with great courage for liberal values and the free exchange of ideas. In Summer of our Discontent, he returns with a gift: a way of understanding what happened to us that preserves the humanity of all parties and points the way forward toward renewal -- Jonathan Haidt, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Anxious Generation Thomas Chatterton Williams uses a fiercely probing intelligence, instinctively dissatisfied with absolutist explanations, to explore without ideological blindfolds what happened in one momentous summer. Camus would have liked this book -- Adam Gopnik, bestselling author of The Real Work Thomas Chatterton Williams manages to make moral and cultural sense of a profoundly perplexing time. By seeing clearly, reflecting honestly, writing with real power and style, and beginning from the premise that no faction is entirely right or entirely wrong, he offers genuine illumination. This is an essential book -- Yuval Levin, author of American Covenant A clever and compelling book ... [Chatterton Williams's] thinking is dextrous and his insights are acute * Sunday Times *

Author Information

THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a visiting professor of humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Centre at Bard College, a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, and a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a columnist at Harper's, he has written for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Le Monde, among other publications. He lives in Paris and New York.

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