A Fellow’s Reading List

by Dr. Alex Lessard, Boethius Fellow

This reading list originally appeared in the Cornerstone Forum’s newsletter

From the world of popular book culture, I periodically receive reading lists compiled under titles like “Curl Up Under a Blanket with These Cozy Fall Reads” – something I’m as likely to do as attend Burning Man. Instead, I’ve been reading a wide range of new books that not only deliver striking insights into the present American cultural moment but have kindled great hope for our next cultural turn. I will title the reading list I’m compiling something like “Level Up Your Book Club Game!” or “Cheers to the Future!” and I would love your recommendations – with a case for inclusion – of any recent books that you think should displace something in this discerning dozen (alphabetically, not meritocratically, arranged):

• Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty – and What to Do About It by Sohrab Ahmari
• Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity by Joe Allen
• The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self: Recovering the Christian Mystery of Personhood by Gil Bailie
• The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice by Wendell Berry
• Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the Modern Age by Rémi Brague
• Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future by Patrick Deneen
• Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited by Mary Eberstadt
• All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory by Edward Feser
• The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End by Neil Howe
• America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything by Christopher Rufo
• Retrieving Freedom: The Christian Appropriation of Classical Tradition by D. C. Schindler
• The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan

Thank you in advance for any recommendations you share and I look forward to reading your suggestions. The next reading list might be “Books I’ve Read That You Don’t Have To” – I’ll tease this by saying that my nomination for the worst ‘serious’ book written this century is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It goes right to the bottom of the list, alongside “Billions” as the worst tv series of the millennium.