Summer of Our Discontent

In this provocative book, Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the most revered and reviled social commentators of our time, paints 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. Taking aim at the ideology of critical race theory, 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, Williams documents the extent to which this transition has altered media, artistic creativity, education, employment, policing, and, most profoundly, the ambient language and culture we use to make sense of our lives.

Williams also decries how liberalism - the very foundation of an open and vibrant society - is in existential crisis, under assault from both the right and the left, especially in our predominantly networked, Internet-driven monoculture.

Sure to be highly controversial, Summer of Our Discontent is a compelling look at our place in a radically changing world.

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

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.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.