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A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
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A Thousand Small Sanities
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Summary
The New York Times best-selling author offers a stirring defence of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time. Not since the early 20th century has liberalism, and liberals, been under such relentless attack, from both right and left. The crisis of democracy in our era has produced a crisis of faith in liberal institutions and, even worse, in liberal thought.
A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures.
Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history - and why, in an age of autocracy, our lives may depend on its continuation.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Rebecca Oliver
- 18-02-20
The reader/author sometimes trips over his words
Clearly believing in every word and proud as a shiny button, the author is like a missionary in his urgency and his garbled and trips over words often (but not too much so that it is intolerable). But his impressive book, while acknowledging the challenges to society that have arisen as a result of how liberalism has been implemented, and while speaking brilliantly of the need to hold contradictory thoughts in one's head at the same time, does not address these (climate change, inequality, market fundamentalism, underinvestment in common goods like education) in a way that helps balance the almost fanatical way he sells us the wonders of liberalism. I am a Liberal and read the book to explore how to counter critics both inside and outside of my own head. Gopnik needs to spend more time on that part in a next book. Despite the space given in this book, he doesn't appear to take these challenges on board seriously and they don't lead him to sufficient rethinking of his beloved (and mine) liberalism.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- KCCaerdydd
- 20-03-23
An eloquent and considered defence of liberalism.
I’d highly recommend this to both friends and sceptics of liberalism. It defends its principles but recognises it’s shortcomings no less.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mark Hammonds
- 23-11-21
Sanity from start to finish
Read this book, is all I can say. And listen to it, too, because his voice is as warm as his thoughts. Gopnik argues generously and persuasively for a political outlook that matches his generosity of mind. It is reinvigorating.
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