The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos

We've pursued and achieved the modern dream of defining ourselves--but at what cost? An influential columnist and editor makes a compelling case for seeking the inherited traditions and ideals that give our lives meaning.

"Ahmari's tour de force makes tradition astonishingly vivid and relevant for the here and now."--Rod Dreher, bestselling author of Live Not by Lies and The Benedict Option

As a young father and a self-proclaimed "radically assimilated immigrant," opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari realized that when it comes to shaping his young son's moral fiber, today's America is woefully lacking. For millennia, the world's great ethical and religious traditions have taught that true happiness lies in pursuing virtue and accepting limits. But now, unbound from these stubborn traditions, we are free to choose whichever way of life we think is most optimal--or, more often than not, merely the easiest. All that remains are the fickle desires that a wealthy, technologically advanced society is equipped to fulfill.

The result is a society riven by deep conflict and individual lives that, for all their apparent freedom, are marked by alienation and stark unhappiness.

In response to this crisis, Ahmari offers twelve questions for us to grapple with--twelve timeless, fundamental queries that challenge our modern certainties. Among them: Is God reasonable? What is freedom for? What do we owe our parents, our bodies, one another? Exploring each question through the lives and ideas of great thinkers, from Saint Augustine to Howard Thurman and from Abraham Joshua Heschel to Andrea Dworkin, Ahmari invites us to examine the hidden assumptions that drive our behavior and, in doing so, to live more humanely in a world that has lost its way.

Author: Sohrab Ahmari
Publisher: Convergent Books
Published: 05/11/2021
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780593137178

About the Author
Sohrab Ahmari is the op-ed editor of the New York Post, a columnist for First Things, and a contributing editor of the Catholic Herald. Previously, he served as a columnist and editor with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London, and as senior writer at Commentary. In addition to those publications, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Spectator, Dissent, and America.