A Thousand Small Sanities

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