The Unbroken Thread

Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos

De: Sohrab Ahmari

Narrado por: Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari challenges the postmodern Western worldview by asking 12 timeless, fundamental questions about life - and reveals that true freedom and happiness is found in the wisdom of traditional thought.

We've pursued and achieved the modern dream of defining ourselves - but at what cost? The influential New York Post op-ed editor makes a compelling case for the modern person to seek the inherited traditions and ideals that give our lives meaning.

As a young father and a self-proclaimed 'radically assimilated immigrant' opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari realised that when it comes to morals and principles he'd want his son to inherit, today's America comes up short. For millennia, the world's great moral and religious traditions taught that true happiness lies in pursuing virtue - and accepting limits. But now, free from these stubborn traditions, we all exercise some degree of liberty to live the way we think is most optimal - or, more often than not, merely the easiest. All that remains are the fickle desires that a wealthy, technologically advanced society is equipped to fulfill.

In response to this crisis, Ahmari offers twelve questions for us to grapple with - twelve timeless, fundamental queries that challenge our modern certainties. Among them: Is God reasonable? What is freedom? What do we owe our parents, our bodies, each other? Drawing on historical and contemporary figures from Saint Augustine to Howard Thurman to Abraham Joshua Heschel, he invites us to consider the hidden beliefs that drive our behaviour, and in so doing, recapture a more human way of living in a world that has lost its way.

(P) 2021 Penguin Audio©2021 Sohrab Ahmari

Reseñas de la Crítica

A serious - and seriously readable - book about the deep issues that our shallow age has foolishly tried to dodge. (Douglas Murray)

Sohrab Ahmari offers a compelling account of the need for tradition in a world of arid, technocratic secularism. Combining a father's love and a crystal-clear analysis of the multiple failures of 'me-first' contemporary liberalism, he mines the past for a devastating critique of the present, providing much needed wisdom in these dark times. Beautifully written and passionately argued, The Unbroken Thread is an absolute must-read: a book that reminds us how much is at stake in some of the most urgent debates of our day. (Giles Fraser)

Ahmari's tour de force makes tradition astonishingly vivid and relevant for the here and now. Only a writer with Ahmari's intellect, his audacious commitment to faith and reason, and a journalist's gift for storytelling could have pulled this off. From the first line to the last, The Unbroken Thread glows like an electrified filament, illuminating a sure path through this new Dark Age. (Rod Dreher)

In a moving series of reflections about figures from our culture, from Maximilian Kolbe to Andrea Dworkin, from Augustine to C. S. Lewis, Sohrab Ahmari raises profound questions about how the past teaches us about the present, and how Christianity unites to and contrasts with the human world outside the faith, from ancient paganism to the secularism of today. A wonderfully written, provocative book. (Thomas Pink, professor of philosophy, King's College London)

Sohrab Ahmari offers more than a vivid and learned defense of traditionalism. With fatherly love, he leads his son - and us - on a fearless consideration of life's big questions, taking thinkers of many historical times and circumstances as interlocutors. Along the way, he recovers truths about the nature and flourishing of the human person - truths seemingly in danger of being forgotten in our contentious and uncertain times. (Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York)

Drawing on the deepest wells of ancient and modern wisdom from around the world, The Unbroken Thread weaves together essential lessons desperately needed to guide a new generation into an uncertain future. Written with love as a legacy for his young son, Sohrab Ahmari has produced a gift for all of us. (Patrick J. Deneen, professor of political science, University of Notre Dame)

Sohrab Ahmari has been thinking for himself since arriving from Iran as a youth. Paradoxically, he has thought himself back into the heart of our best traditions and has seen, with striking clarity, that the modern quest for total liberation of the intellect and will is both quixotic and damaging, individually and collectively. This clever and engaging work is the result; the dozen questions it asks are fresh, and the answers it gives are powerfully persuasive. (Adrian Vermeule, Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School)