{"product_id":"9781590179031","title":"The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction","description":"We don’t understand the reactionary mind. As a result, argues Mark Lilla  in this timely book, the ideas and passions that shape today’s  political dramas are unintelligible to us. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe reactionary is  anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the  revolutionary, someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and  suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear  that history is rushing toward catastrophe. And like the revolutionary  his political engagements are motivated by highly developed ideas.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLilla  begins with three twentieth-century philosophers—Franz Rosenzweig, Eric  Voegelin, and Leo Strauss—who attributed the problems of modern society  to a break in the history of ideas and promoted a return to earlier  modes of thought. He then examines the enduring power of grand  historical narratives of betrayal to shape political outlooks since the  French Revolution, and shows how these narratives are employed in the  writings of Europe’s right-wing cultural pessimists and Maoist  neocommunists, American theoconservatives fantasizing about the harmony  of medieval Catholic society and radical Islamists seeking to restore a  vanished Muslim caliphate. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe revolutionary spirit that  inspired political movements across the world for two centuries may have  died out. But the spirit of reaction that rose to meet it has survived  and is proving just as formidable a historical force. We live in an age  when the tragicomic nostalgia of Don Quixote for a lost golden age has  been transformed into a potent and sometimes deadly weapon. Mark Lilla  helps us to understand why.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47166963908848,"sku":"9781590179031","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781590179031_p0.jpg?v=1763803104","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781590179031","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}