A Time to Build
From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream
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Narrated by:
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Ford Enlow
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By:
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Yuval Levin
About this listen
A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions
Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse.
Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. 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 and militate against alienation.
As Levin argues, now 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.
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Critic reviews
"Mainstream Republicans dismayed by the current state of their party...will savor this well-reasoned and hopeful study." (Publishers Weekly)
"A provocative, inspiring look at the underlying cause of our polarization and dysfunction." (Kirkus)
"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)
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Suicide of the West
- How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Jonah Goldberg
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle.
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Put some gratitude in your attitude
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-18
By: Jonah Goldberg
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Propaganda
- The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
- By: Jacques Ellul
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the greatest French philosophers of the 20th century comes a seminal study and critique of propaganda. Taking not only a psychological approach but a sociological approach as well, Jacques Ellul outlines the taxonomy for propaganda and, ultimately, its destructive nature towards democracy. Drawing from his own experiences fighting for the French resistance against the Vichy regime, Ellul offers a unique insight into the propaganda machine.
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Excellent analysis on the dichotomies of propagandize media
- By Anonymous User on 04-03-21
By: Jacques Ellul
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The Smallest Minority
- Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics
- By: Kevin D. Williamson
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Listener beware: Kevin D. Williamson - the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle - comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.”
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Brutally honest, accurate and relevant
- By Sean on 09-19-19
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The Great Delusion
- Liberal Dreams and International Realities
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.
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Dense, fact filled, sober analysis and prescription
- By John Brynjolfsson on 12-15-18
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A Secular Age
- By: Charles Taylor
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 42 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we - in the West, at least - largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean - of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.
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Needs Guest Narrators for French and German
- By Norman on 06-13-15
By: Charles Taylor
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Democracy Incorporated
- Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
- By: Sheldon S. Wolin
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.
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Essential listening....
- By M. Levine on 02-25-11
By: Sheldon S. Wolin
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Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
- By: Richard Hofstadter
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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This book throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.
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Fifty years later, still valid today
- By David Evan Glasser on 11-13-18
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Democracy Matters
- Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
- By: Cornel West
- Narrated by: Cornel West
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Democracy Matters is Cornel West's bold and powerful critique of the troubling deterioration of democracy in America in this threatening post-9/11 age of terrorist rage and imperial overreach, and an inspiring call for a resurgence of the deep democratic tradition in our country, which has waged war on the forces of imperialist corruption throughout our history.
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Well written, a refreshing voice of inspiration
- By Gabriel on 07-06-05
By: Cornel West
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The Light That Failed
- Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- By: Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat.
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Great text
- By Safronov on 05-03-21
By: Ivan Krastev, and others
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The People vs. Democracy
- Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
- By: Yascha Mounk
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result democracy itself may now be at risk. Two core components of liberal democracy - individual rights and the popular will - are at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of "rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create a system of "democracy without rights."
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Not worth it
- By DailyShopper on 06-07-18
By: Yascha Mounk
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Ill Fares the Land
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In Ill Fares The Land, Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, reveals how we have arrived at our present dangerously confused moment. Judt masterfully crystallizes what we've all been feeling into a way to think our way into, and thus out of, our great collective dis-ease about the current state of things.
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Blah, Blah, Blah.
- By Michael on 07-15-10
By: Tony Judt
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A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Erudite and entertaining!
- By D. A. Vail on 05-20-19
By: Adam Gopnik
What listeners say about A Time to Build
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- B. McAllister
- 02-27-20
Thought-provoking, constructive, and objective
Mr Levin takes a different approach at looking to describe drivers and reasons for the extreme polarization, and absence of constructive dialogue that we increasingly see in the US. I thought I had a decent framework for looking at how institutions fit in a community, but apparently I had some gaps. While I'm in the process of my second pass through the book, and therefore can't say that I completely agree with everything Mr Levin presents, the initial pass suggested it is a compelling argument, worth the time and energy of diving deeper into his points.
I do like how he surveys the landscapes, identifies macro forces at work, but then distills these down to the individual level. Near the conclusion, he extends an invitation to the reader to try a few things. Having an impact, in his model, is accessible to the individual, immediately, and as the awareness and understanding grows through taking those few steps he recommends, I anticipate the momentum compels an increasing share of the community to drive great changes within institutions towards restoring their formative power and relevance.
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- Robert N. Driscoll
- 03-03-20
Fantastic Book
One of the best books I've read discussing current acrimony and dissatisfaction and offering a framework of analyzing and addressing the problems. Mediating institutions!! Shades of Tim Carney's and Jonah Goldberg's recent books, but more focused on institutions.
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- James Greer
- 08-20-20
Erratic
I've read Mr. Levin's work for years, and enjoyed it. He writes well, is accessible to the average reader and seems evenhanded in his approach. Yet, this audio presentation left me often shaking my head.
There is much to like, much that provoked thought, and introspection. Points of agreement are plentiful. He seems transfixed on one particular notion, which left me dissatisfied - that institutioms form and shape us, and give us deeper meaning. We are citizens of overlapping social constructs that help us, often involuntarily, to understand our roles and responsibilities.
Sure thing. Mr. Levin never really addresses one of life's issues in what is wrong with institutions in general. He does not examine, more than in passing, what the incentives are for people to behave in ways they do. Reform is impossible until incentives are.examined. All the altruistic hopes are misplaced if the driving force toward something overcomes the noble aspiration.
This was a fine book, well read in the Audinle version. It didn't provoke me to an epiphany I can embrace.
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- Q Garcia
- 09-16-20
Rebuild America
I was introduced to this author thru C-SPAN 's in-depth program. In the age of "me too" and the "cancel culture" this is as timely as it gets. The institutions of family, business, religion, and many others are not lifting anyone up anymore , but bring everyone down. By bowing to everyone, no one is served. Institutions no longer work for the good of all, just the individual. Speaking only works if others are listening.
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- Jakob
- 01-26-23
Incisive and Illuminating
Yuval Levin’s analysis deftly describes and diagnoses the political cultural challenges we face today as a result of institutional weakness and the corresponding lack of trust. Levin explains why our attempts to replace institutions with celebrity fall short, arguing that a recommitment to building and strengthening capable and trustworthy institutions is the superior course. An excellent, excellent title.
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- R. Lott
- 03-11-21
A Time to Celebrate
Yuval pivots the lense of current events to focus on unseparable roots of problems we face to in America at large. His virtue and care for the nation shines through the seriousness of this analysis. For anyone hungry to understand "what is missing, and what has gone wrong", Yuval provides a comprehensive blueprint of the foundations of our crippling and melancholic divison based on political differences.
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- Joey Caster
- 11-26-20
So many good points but weak solutions
The author had so many good points and views on very relevant subjects but was missing any solid solutions to the problems. I learned a lot from this book, it just left me wanting a strong Idea for a solution to the problems but left me wanting more.
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- Richard Dine
- 03-22-21
Missing what really ails us
Good analysis of some of America's underlying challenge but proposed solutions inadequate. Audio quality is good.
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