A Time to Build - by Yuval Levin (Paperback)

About the Book

Americans are living through a social crisis. Politics are polarized and culture wars rage. But the social crisis is not defined by an oppressive presence by a lack of forces that unite us. The solution is to build and rebuild by committing to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. -- Adapted from back cover.

Book Synopsis

A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions

"A Time to Build is exactly what America needs right now." --Wall Street Journal

Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics are polarized and bitterly divided, and culture wars rage across the country. Left and right alike have blamed our institutions and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cancelling, defunding, draining the swamp. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us.

In A Time to Build, Levin argues that today is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another.

Review Quotes

"A Time to Build is exactly what America needs right now. A moving call to recommit to the great project of our common life. And from Yuval Levin, one of the most thoughtful and pertinent of our public intellectuals, who writes like a dream if dreams were always clear. What an encouraging book this is, and what an important one."--Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

"Crisply written and characteristically thoughtful."--Commentary

"In A Time to Build, one of the few mildly optimistic political books to come out in this winter of depressing ones, the conservative scholar (and editor of National Affairs) Yuval Levin argues for... a comprehensive recommitment to American institutions--families and churches, academia and government--as an alternative to the current tendency to use them instrumentally, as a platform for partisan ambitions and personal desires."--Ross Douthat, New York Times

"In a political moment focused only on tearing down, Yuval Levin shows the necessity and the promise of institution-building. This book is an essential starting point toward an American renewal."--Ben Sasse, former senator (R-Nebraska)

"Mainstream Republicans dismayed by the current state of their party... will savor this well-reasoned and hopeful study."--Publishers Weekly

"The most thoughtful conservative theorist of his generation."--Washington Post

"There is a great deal of ruin in our society. Yuval Levin does not shrink from taking the full measure of our woes. But his counsel is not despair. This perceptive and important book sets an agenda for renewing the institutions we need in order to live and flourish together as Americans."--R.R. Reno, editor of First Things

"Yuval Levin stands athwart the wrecking ball of anger that is smashing a democracy in desperate need of rebuilding and repair. A Time to Build sets forth an ambitious blueprint for how Americans can work together to strengthen broken institutions we cannot live without."--Bruce Reed, former White House deputy chief of staff

"A Time to Build diagnoses the decline of institutions as the source of many social ills, including loneliness and despair, that have been attributed to other causes."--Mona Charen, National Review

"A provocative, inspiring look at the underlying cause of our polarization and dysfunction."--Kirkus

"As Yuval Levin writes in his profound forthcoming book, A Time to Build, Trump is an example of a person who wasn't formed by an institution. He is self-created and self-enclosed. He governs as a perpetual outsider, tweeting insults to members of his own cabinet. At its best, the impeachment process is an attempt to protect our institutions from his inability to obey the rules."--David Brooks, New York Times

"In his excellent forthcoming book A Time to Build, Yuval Levin discusses how we've degraded our institutions by not letting them shape and constrain us, but instead using them as mere platforms."--Rich Lowry, National Review

About the Author

Yuval Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is a senior editor at the New Atlantis, contributing editor at National Review, and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. His other books include The Fractured Republic and American Covenant. He lives in Maryland.