Adam Gopnik’s essay is presented as a letter to his teenage daughter, who was “shocked and troubled” by the election of Donald Trump in 2016, a reaction shared by many liberal Americans. That personal connection makes the NEW YORKER essayist a natural choice as narrator, and, indeed, his performance adds an air of authenticity to this audio. As he lays out his defense of liberalism—as opposed to leftist ideology—his pace is lively, his delivery is expressive, and his mild humor is delivered with a light touch. While Gopnik’s arguments will no doubt be controversial in our increasingly polarized political climate, they probably shouldn’t be. Indeed, the listener may be left wishing for a little more edginess and a little less intellectual meandering. D.B. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Witty, humane, learned…

★ 04/08/2019

According to this militantly nonfanatical treatise, liberalism is the self-doubting creed of cautious, compromising, incremental reform—and that’s why it’s great. New Yorker essayist Gopnik (Paris to the Moon) grounds liberalism not in arid individualism but in emotion and social connection, an animus against suffering and for freedom and equality, an understanding of human fallibility, a tolerance for debate, and a search for lasting improvements through democratic action. To conservatives who say liberal rationalism erodes communities, families, and sacred values, he replies that it allows diverse communities and religious beliefs to flourish without bitter divisions; to left-wingers who condemn it as a cover for capitalist exploitation, he champions liberalism’s record of progressivism without the totalitarian repressions of communism or the essentialist identity politics of today’s left. Gopnik hangs his discussion on vivid profiles of liberal dreamers and doers, from theorist-lovebirds Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill to civil rights pioneers Frederick Douglass and Bayard Rustin. He writes with a pithy, aphoristic charm—“what we have today, the insistent sneering insists, is a long, permanent bar fight, where you can’t trust a liberal to throw a bourbon bottle at the bad guys”—that overlies deep erudition and nuanced analysis. The result is a smart, exhilarating defense of the liberal tradition. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency. (May)

A Foreign Affairs Book of the Year, 2019

"Witty, humane, learned...An elegant discussion."—New York Times

"A stirring defense of liberalism's philosophical tradition and continued relevance against its critics on both left and right."—Jonathan Chait

"Written with Adam Gopnik's signature wit and charm, A Thousand Small Sanities is also a clarion call at a moment of great danger. This fierce, capacious, and startlingly intelligent defense of a whole political, social, and moral order is essential reading for our time."—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

"Adam Gopnik is one of the greatest thinkers and wordsmiths of our age, and this book may be his most masterful, meaningful, and enjoyable yet. He turns his sweeping intellectual imagination into a conversation with a cross-partisan American longing for a renewal of common life that scarcely knows how to name itself. In an age in which we've connected ourselves with scale but without quality, and fractured communal cohesion in part by forgetting our shared liberal inheritance, this book is essential, redemptive reading."—Krista Tippett, host, "On Being"

"It's a great book about liberalism. You'll read it in a day. Highly recommended."—Chris Hayes

"An elegant, impassioned, and rigorously reasoned effort to re-humanize the most humanistic moral and political philosophy our civilization has produced..."—Brainpickings

"The longtime New Yorker staff writer and prolific cultural critic once again shows his astute awareness of the public's political consciousness in this new work championing 'liberalism.' ... Gopnik's learned, lofty...study ultimately reasserts the belief in the 'infinity of small effect.'"—Kirkus Reviews

"A smart, exhilarating defense of the liberal tradition."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Adam Gopnik’s essay is presented as a letter to his teenage daughter, who was “shocked and troubled” by the election of Donald Trump in 2016, a reaction shared by many liberal Americans. That personal connection makes the NEW YORKER essayist a natural choice as narrator, and, indeed, his performance adds an air of authenticity to this audio. As he lays out his defense of liberalism—as opposed to leftist ideology—his pace is lively, his delivery is expressive, and his mild humor is delivered with a light touch. While Gopnik’s arguments will no doubt be controversial in our increasingly polarized political climate, they probably shouldn’t be. Indeed, the listener may be left wishing for a little more edginess and a little less intellectual meandering. D.B. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine