Ross Douthat's Books

The Decadent Society

America Before and After the Pandemic

By: Ross Douthat

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The Decadent Society

America Before and After the Pandemic

By: Ross Douthat

From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a “clever and stimulating” (The New York Times Book Review) portrait of how our turbulent age is defined by dark forces seemingly beyond our control. The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis. Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment—by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.

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272

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Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476785252

ISBN 13

9781476785257

Bad Religion

How We Became a Nation of Heretics

By: Ross Douthat

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Bad Religion

How We Became a Nation of Heretics

By: Ross Douthat

Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices.

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352

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Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

143917833X

ISBN 13

9781439178331

The Deep Places

A Memoir of Illness and Discovery

By: Ross Douthat

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The Deep Places

A Memoir of Illness and Discovery

By: Ross Douthat

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • In this vulnerable, insightful memoir, the New York Times columnist tells the story of his five-year struggle with a disease that officially doesn’t exist, exploring the limits of modern medicine, the stories that we unexpectedly fall into, and the secrets that only suffering reveals. “A powerful memoir about our fragile hopes in the face of chronic illness.”—Kate Bowler, bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family, with two young daughters and a pregnant wife, from Washington, D.C., to a sprawling farmhouse in a picturesque Connecticut town when he acquired a mysterious and devastating sickness. It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain--a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which according to CDC definitions does not actually exist: the chronic form of Lyme disease, a hotly contested condition that devastates the lives of tens of thousands of people but has no official recognition--and no medically approved cure. From a rural dream house that now felt like a prison, Douthat's search for help takes him off the map of official medicine, into territory where cranks and conspiracies abound and patients are forced to take control of their own treatment and experiment on themselves. Slowly, against his instincts and assumptions, he realizes that many of the cranks and weirdos are right, that many supposed "hypochondriacs" are victims of an indifferent medical establishment, and that all kinds of unexpected experiences and revelations lurk beneath the surface of normal existence, in the places underneath. The Deep Places is a story about what happens when you are terribly sick and realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat you can only do so much. Along the way, Douthat describes his struggle back toward health with wit and candor, portraying sickness as the most terrible of gifts. It teaches you to appreciate the grace of ordinary life by taking that life away from you. It reveals the deep strangeness of the world, the possibility that the reasonable people might be wrong, and the necessity of figuring out things for yourself. And it proves, day by dreadful day, that you are stronger than you ever imagined, and that even in the depths there is always hope.

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224

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Convergent Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0593237374

ISBN 13

9780593237373

Grand New Party

How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream

By: Ross Douthat,Reihan Salam

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Grand New Party

How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream

By: Ross Douthat,Reihan Salam

In a provocative challenge to Republican conventional wisdom, two of the Right's rising young thinkers call upon the GOP to focus on the interests and needs of working-class voters.Grand New Party lays bare the failures of the conservative revolution and presents a detailed blueprint for building the next Republican majority. Blending history, analysis, and fresh, often controversial recommendations, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam argue that it is time to move beyond the Reagan legacy and the current Republican power structure. With specific proposals covering such hot-button topics as immigration, health care, and taxes, Grand New Party shakes up the Right, challenges the Left, and confronts the changing political landscape.

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274

Publisher

Anchor

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307277801

ISBN 13

9780307277800

To Change the Church

Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism

By: Ross Douthat

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To Change the Church

Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism

By: Ross Douthat

A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In To Change the Church, Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies.

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256

Publisher

Simon & Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501146920

ISBN 13

9781501146923

The Decadent Society

America Before and After the Pandemic

By: Ross Douthat

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The Decadent Society

America Before and After the Pandemic

By: Ross Douthat

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272

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Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476785252

ISBN 13

9781476785257

Bad Religion

How We Became a Nation of Heretics

By: Ross Douthat

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Bad Religion

How We Became a Nation of Heretics

By: Ross Douthat

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352

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Simon and Schuster

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ISBN 10

143917833X

ISBN 13

9781439178331

The Deep Places

A Memoir of Illness and Discovery

By: Ross Douthat

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The Deep Places

A Memoir of Illness and Discovery

By: Ross Douthat

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224

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Convergent Books

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ISBN 10

0593237374

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9780593237373

To Change the Church

Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism

By: Ross Douthat

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To Change the Church

Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism

By: Ross Douthat

A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option). Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies. “A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).

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272

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Simon & Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501146939

ISBN 13

9781501146930

Evangelical Worship

An American Mosaic

By: Melanie C. Ross

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Evangelical Worship

An American Mosaic

By: Melanie C. Ross

Say the words "evangelical worship" to anyone in the United States -- even if they are not particularly religious -- and a picture will likely spring to mind unbidden: a mass of white, middle-class worshippers with eyes closed, faces tilted upward, and hands raised to the sky. Yet despite the centrality of this image, many scholars have underestimated evangelical worship as little more than a manipulative effort to arouse devotional exhilaration. It is frequently dismissed as a reiteration of nineteenth-century revivalism or a derivative imitation of secular entertainment -- three Christian rock songs and a spiritual TED talk. But by failing to engage this worship seriously, we miss vital insights into a form of Protestantism that exerts widespread influence in the United States and around the world. Evangelical Worship offers a new way forward in the study of American evangelical Christianity. Weaving together insights from American religious history and liturgical studies, and drawing on extensive fieldwork in seven congregations, Melanie C. Ross brings contemporary evangelical worship to life. She argues that corporate worship is not a peripheral "extra" tacked on to a fully-formed spiritual, political, and cultural movement, but rather the crucible through which congregations forge, argue over, and enact their unique contributions to the American mosaic known as evangelicalism.

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321

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

019753077X

ISBN 13

9780197530771

The Industries of the Future

By: Alec Ross

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The Industries of the Future

By: Alec Ross

The New York Times bestseller, from leading innovation expert Alec Ross, a “fascinating vision” (Forbes) of what’s next for the world and how to navigate the changes the future will bring. While Alec Ross was working as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State, he traveled to forty-one countries, exploring the latest advances coming out of every continent. From startup hubs in Kenya to R&D labs in South Korea, Ross has seen what the future holds. In The Industries of the Future, Ross provides a “lucid and informed guide” (Financial Times) to the changes coming in the next ten years. He examines the fields that will most shape our economic future, including robotics and artificial intelligence, cybercrime and cybersecurity, the commercialization of genomics, the next step for big data, and the impact of digital technology on money and markets. In each of these realms, Ross addresses the toughest questions: How will we have to adapt to the changing nature of work? Is the prospect of cyberwar sparking the next arms race? How can the world’s rising nations hope to match Silicon Valley with their own innovation hotspots? And what can today’s parents do to prepare their children for tomorrow? Ross blends storytelling and economic analysis to show how sweeping global trends are affecting the ways we live. Sharing insights from global leaders—from the founders of Google and Twitter to defense experts like David Petraeus—Ross reveals the technologies and industries that will drive the next stage of globalization. The Industries of the Future is “a riveting and mind-bending book” (New York Journal of Books), a “must read” (Wendy Kopp, Founder of Teach for America) regardless of “whether you follow these fields closely or you still think of Honda as a car rather than a robotics company” (Forbes).

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320

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476753679

ISBN 13

9781476753676

First Lady Of The South: The Life Of Mrs. Jefferson Davis

By: Ishbel Ross

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First Lady Of The South: The Life Of Mrs. Jefferson Davis

By: Ishbel Ross

This brilliant and engaging biography of Varina Davis tells of the early days of her marriage to Jefferson Davis, the controversial figure who would become president of the Confederacy. The story gives a detailed account of their life in Washington and Richmond, the years of war, and follows their journey during the weeks and months of escape and then—following Jefferson Davis’ release from prison—exile. “EVERY move the made was noticed and commented on. She was accused of being friendly to the North, of harboring spies in her home, of feasting when others starred, of pretentious ways, of nepotism, of not reading the books which she quoted so freely, of extravagant entertaining in hours of crisis, and of meddling in politics and military affairs. Some of the stories were true; many were not, but it is self-evident that she instinctively generated heat lightning around her.”—First Lady of the South. Includes numerous illustrations.

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840

Publisher

Pickle Partners Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1786258536

ISBN 13

9781786258533

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case

Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era

By: Michael Anthony Ross

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The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case

Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era

By: Michael Anthony Ross

In this stunning work of historical recreation, Michael Ross uses a kidnapping investigation and trial that electrified the South in the summer of 1870 to offer important new insights into the complexities and possibilities of the Reconstruction era.

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320

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199778809

ISBN 13

9780199778805

Margaret Atwood

By: Margaret Atwood,Sparknotes

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Margaret Atwood

By: Margaret Atwood,Sparknotes

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100

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Spark Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1586635174

ISBN 13

9781586635176

Grand New Party

How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream

By: Ross Douthat,Reihan Salam

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Grand New Party

How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream

By: Ross Douthat,Reihan Salam

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258

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Anchor

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ISBN 10

0385526695

ISBN 13

9780385526692

Farewell to Manzanar

By: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston,Ross Gregory Douthat,Brian Phillips

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Farewell to Manzanar

By: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston,Ross Gregory Douthat,Brian Phillips

A Japanese-American woman looks back on life at an internment camp during World War II and tells of how the fear, confusion, and ultimate dignity of the people there shaped her life. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

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Spark Notes

Published Date

ISBN 10

1586638319

ISBN 13

9781586638313

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By: Ross Gregory Douthat,Robert Louis Stevenson,Benjamin Lytal

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By: Ross Gregory Douthat,Robert Louis Stevenson,Benjamin Lytal

Get your "A" in gear! They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception "SparkNotes(TM) has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. "SparkNotes'(TM) motto is "Smarter, Better, Faster because: - They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts. - They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them. - The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time. And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!

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Spark Notes

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ISBN 10

1586635093

ISBN 13

9781586635091

Plough Quarterly No. 13 - Save Our Souls

Inwardness in a Distracted Age

By: Eberhard Arnold,Stephanie Saldaña,Ross Douthat,Simone Weil,Dana Gioia,Rod Dreher,Pawel Kuczynski,Meister Eckhart,Isaac Penington,Gerard Manley Hopkins,Jacqueline C. Rivers

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Plough Quarterly No. 13 - Save Our Souls

Inwardness in a Distracted Age

By: Eberhard Arnold,Stephanie Saldaña,Ross Douthat,Simone Weil,Dana Gioia,Rod Dreher,Pawel Kuczynski,Meister Eckhart,Isaac Penington,Gerard Manley Hopkins,Jacqueline C. Rivers

In an age of distraction, this issue of Plough Quarterly looks at inwardness - how sustainable human community and social activism must be rooted in the spiritual life. How much of your day is spent in reality, and how much in a fake world? We've learned that screen time is bad for you, too much media consumption damages your heart, and Facebook can make you mentally ill. We're aware of the mind-altering power of advertising, the dehumanizing passions of our polarized politics, and the fact that millions of us have learned to multitask while watching footage of refugees drowning. But what are we to do about it? If this fake world is invading our souls, it's in our souls that we must find the cure. Only a return to inwardness can bring distracted moderns back to Jesus and to constructive work for his kingdom. Here activists may object: Isn't it the height of selfishness to retreat into our interior life when we ought to be out saving starving children? Yet Christians through the ages have insisted that inwardness is crucial to the life of discipleship. It's what keeps us from falling for demagogues and false gospels, from wasting life on superficialities, and from ignoring our neighbor. In fact, throughout history it has often been the mystics who were most active in serving others. In true Plough fashion, this issue brings together a colorful cast of examples: from medieval Beguines and Benedictines to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simone Weil, and Fannie Lou Hamer, to contemporary voices like Robert Cardinal Sarah, Johann Christoph Arnold, and three persecuted Syrian priests. These lives offer us glimpses of the real world from which our fake world seeks to distract us, and can guide us in our own refusal to conform. Also in this issue: * Poetry from Gerard Manley Hopkins and Malcolm Guite * Insights on inwardness from Meister Eckhart, Eberhard Arnold, Marguerite Porete, Simone Weil, and Isaac Penington * A forum on the Benedict Option with Rod Dreher, Ross Douthat, Jacqueline C. Rivers, and Randall Gauger * Artwork by Jason Landsel, Bruce Herman, Jane Chapin, Graham Berry, Fra Angelico, Francisco de Zurbarán, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, Matthew J. Cutter, John August Swanson, Vittorio Matteo Corcos, and Leon Dabo Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

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