Audiobooks by Anthony Esolen

Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World

Alone among the creatures of the world, man suffers a pang both bitter and sweet. It is an ache for the homecoming. The Greeks called it nostalgia. Post-modern man, homeless almost by definition, cannot understand nostalgia. If he is a progressive, dreaming of a utopia to come, he dismisses it contemptuously, eager to bury a past he despises. If he is a reactionary, he sentimentalizes it, dreaming of a lost golden age. In this profound reflection, Anthony Esolen explores the true meaning of nostalgia and its place in the human heart. Drawing on the great works of Western literature from the Odyssey to Flannery O'Connor, he traces the development of this fundamental longing from the pagan's desire for his earthly home, which most famously inspired Odysseys' heroic return to Ithaca, to its transformation under Christianity. The doctrine of the fall of man forestalls sentimental traditionalism by insisting that there has been no Eden since Eden. And the revelation of heaven as our true and final home, directing man's longing to the next world, paradoxically strengthens and ennobles the pilgrim's devotion to his home in this world. In our own day, Christian nostalgia stands in frank opposition to the secular usurpation of this longing. Looking for a city that does not exist, the progressive treats original sin, which afflicts everyone, as mere political error, which afflicts only his opponents. To him, history is a long tale of misery with nothing to teach us. Despising his fathers, he lives in a world without piety. Only the future, which no one can know, is real to him. It is an idol that justifies all manner of evil and folly. Nostalgia rightly understood is not an invitation to repeat the sins of the past or to repudiate what experience and reflection have taught us, but to hear the call of sanity and sweetness again. Perhaps we will shake our heads as if awaking from a bad and feverish dream and, coming to ourselves, resolve, like the Prodigal, to 'arise and go to my father's house.'

Anthony Esolen (Author), Tom Parks (Narrator)

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Defending Boyhood: How Building Forts, Reading Stories, Playing Ball, and Praying to God Can Change

Western civilization has no more eloquent defender than Anthony Esolen, a man who has counted the cost, and paid it, of leading the way in that defense. Following on his compelling prior volume, Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, Professor Esolen returns, this time in defense of boys and an experience of boyhood that is on the wane, if not extinguished in many quarters of the modern world-and to illuminate the threats our precious sons face from harridans, harpies, and all purveyors and promoters of political correctness and of the misguided and ultimately doomed-though not before it has done much mischief-project of blurring the distinctions between boys and girls. Drawing on his own, in many ways all-American boyhood, Esolen, at times wistfully, at times, playfully, and at times prophetically-in the literal sense of employing the thunder of an Old Testament prophet, details what a good boyhood once was and what it can be again. He does so in chapters inspiringly titled: The Arena to Enter Brothers to Gather Mountains to Climb The Man to Follow Work to Do Songs to Sing Enemies to Slay Life to Give Anthony Esolen prescribes a return to sanity to an insane world. He may not be able to change the world, but enter into the world of boyhood with him and he just might change you and the lives of the boys you love.

Anthony Esolen (Author), Kevin F. Spalding (Narrator)

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Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity

Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity is a rousing, compelling defense of traditional, natural marriage. Here, Anthony Esolen, professor at Providence College and a prolific writer, uses moral, theological, and cultural arguments to defend this holy and ancient institution, the bedrock of society - and to illuminate the threats it faces from modern revolutions in law, public policy, and sexual morality. Inside, discover: Traditional marriage's roots in age-old religious, cultural, and natural laws Why gay marriage is a metaphysical impossibility How acceptance and legal sanction of gay marriage threatens the family How the state becomes a religion when it attempts to elevate gay marriage, and enshrine as a civil right all consensual sex How divorce and sexual license have brought marriage to the brink How today's culture has impoverished and emptied love of its true meaning In Defending Marriage, Esolen expertly and succinctly identifies the cultural dangers of gay marriage and the Sexual Revolution which paved its way. He offers a stirring defense of true marriage, the family, culture, and love - and provides the compelling arguments that will return us to sanity, and out of our current morass.

Anthony Esolen (Author), Kevin F. Spalding (Narrator)

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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization

Western civilization is under attack. At universities and in the media, professors and pundits decry Western civilization as exploitative, destructive, and without value. But fear not: coming to its defense is Professor Anthony Esolen's the Politically Incorrect Guideâ„¢ to Western Civilization. This "P.I. G." will knock down the relativist arguments and show how the West laid the cornerstones for all of modern civilization, including historical, artistic, and intellectual achievements. Using historical evidence and compelling arguments, Esolen proves why we not only owe it to history, but also to ourselves to set the record straight and respectfully acknowledge Western civilization's vital role in shaping our values and our world.

Anthony Esolen, Anthony M. Esolen (Author), Malcolm Hillgartner (Narrator)

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