About this item
We live in a profoundly spiritual age--but in a very strange way, different from every other moment of our history. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand on the side of morality--to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light.Or so Joseph Bottum argues in An Anxious Age, an account of modern America as a morality tale, formed by its spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty years: the collapse of the Mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity.
About the Author
The author of bestselling Kindle Singles, from "The Gospel According to Tim" to "Dakota Christmas" (revised and expanded as part of his new seasonal volume, "The Christmas Plains") , Joseph Bottum is a widely published essayist and poet, with work in magazines and newspapers from the "Atlantic" to the "Wall Street Journal."
The former literary editor of the "Weekly Standard" and former editor in chief of the journal "First Things," he holds a Ph.D. in medieval philosophy and has done television commentary for networks from the BBC to EWTN, including appearances on NBC's Meet the Press and the PBS NewHour. His books include his latest poetry collection, "The Second Spring."
He lives with his family far off in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
