Bøker av Jonathan Rauch

In this groundbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the "Constitution of Knowledge" - our social system for turning disagreement into truth.

Why the crisis of Christianity has become a crisis for democracy

"In this warm, wise, and witty overview, Jonathan Rauch combines evidence and experience to show his fellow adults that the best is yet to come." -Steven Pinker, bestselling author of Enlightenment NowThis book will change your life by showing you how life changes.Why does happiness get harder in your 40s? Why do you feel in a slump when you're successful? Where does this malaise come from? And, most importantly, will it ever end?Drawing on cutting-edge research, award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch answers all these questions. He shows that from our 20s into our 40s, happiness follows a U-shaped trajectory, a "happiness curve," declining from the optimism of youth into what's often a long, low slump in middle age, before starting to rise again in our 50s.This isn't a midlife crisis, though. Rauch reveals that this slump is instead a natural stage of life-and an essential one. By shifting priorities away from competition and toward compassion, it equips you with new tools for wisdom and gratitude to win the third period of life. And Rauch can testify to this personally because it was his own slump, despite acclaim as a journalist and commentator that compelled him to investigate the happiness curve. His own story and the stories of many others from all walks of life-from a steelworker and a limo driver to a telecoms executive and a philanthropist-show how the ordeal of midlife malaise reboots our values and even our brains for a rebirth of gratitude. Full of insights and data and featuring many ways to endure the slump and avoid its perils and traps, The Happiness Curve doesn't just show you the dark forest of midlife, it helps you find a path through the trees. It also demonstrates how we can-and why we must-do more to help each other through the woods. Midlife is a journey we mustn't walk alone.

A young boy sitting on a piano bench realizes one day that he will never marry. At the time this seems merely a simple, if odd, fact, but as his attraction to boys grows stronger, he is pulled into a vortex of denial. Not just for one year or even ten, but for 25 years, he lives in an inverted world, a place like a photographic negative, where love is hate, attraction is envy, and childhood never ends. He comes to think of himself as a kind of monster-until one day, seemingly miraculously, the world turns itself upright and the possibility of love floods in. Equal parts Oliver Sacks and George Orwell, with a dash of Woody Allen, Jonathan Rauch's memoir is by turns harrowing and funny, a grippingly intimate journey through a bizarre maze of self-torment that ends with an unexpected discovery. Many people, gay and straight, have lived through their own versions of this story, seeking to twist their personality in directions it just wouldn't go. Not all have been lucky enough to escape. First published in 2013, Denial has been revised for this new edition, which includes a new afterword by the author.

"Thoughtful and convincingly argued . . . Rauch's impressive book is as enthusiastic an encomium to marriage as anyone, gay or straight, could write." -David J. Garrow, The Washington Post Book World In May 2004, gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, but it remains a divisive and contentious issue across America. As liberals and conservatives mobilize around this issue, no one has come forward with a more compelling, comprehensive, and readable case for gay marriage than Jonathan Rauch. In this book, he puts forward a clear and honest manifesto explaining why gay marriage is important-even crucial-to the health of marriage in America today, grounding his argument in commonsense, mainstream values and confronting social conservatives on their own turf. Marriage, he observes, is more than a bond between individuals; it also links them to the community at large. Excluding some people from the prospect of marriage not only is harmful to them but also is corrosive of the institution itself.Gay marriage, he shows, is a "win-win-win" for strengthening the bonds that tie us together and for remaining true to our national heritage of fairness and humaneness toward all.

A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. The author makes a persuasive argument for the value of "liberal science" and the idea that conflicting views produce knowledge within society. The answer to bias and prejudice, he argues, is pluralism - not purism.