Anthony Esolen has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 7 ratings. The most-rated is Out of the Ashes.
Out of the Ashes
Summary
It's not your imagination: civilized human society is collapsing. Communities no longer work toward a common good; children are no longer our first priority; businesses no longer value hard work; arts and skills have been lost; and gender is decided by the individual, not biology. We cannot reverse national and global trends, says professor Anthony Esolen, but we can build communities that live up to humanity's promise and responsibility. In Out of the Ashes, Esolen identifies the gaping problems in our society and lays out a blueprint for reconstruction that puts our future in the hands of individuals focused on the good of the local community.
©2017 eChristian (P)2017 eChristian
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization
Summary
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 this "P.I." guide to Western civilization. Using historical evidence, Professor Anthony Esolen knocks down the relativist arguments and shows how the West laid the cornerstones for all of modern civilization, including historical, artistic, and intellectual achievements. We owe it to history and to ourselves to acknowledge Western civilization's role in shaping our values and our world.
©2008 Anthony Michael Esolen (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Nostalgia
Summary
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."
©2018 by Anthony Esolen. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching
Summary
Many claim that Catholic Social Teaching implies the existence of a vast welfare state. In these pages, Anthony Esolen pulls back the curtain on these false philosophers, showing how they've undermined the authentic social teachings of the Church in order to neutralize the biggest threat to their plans for secularization the Catholic Church. With the voluminous writings of Pope Leo XIII as his guide, Esolen explains that Catholic Social Teaching isn't focused exclusively on serving the poor. Indeed, it offers us a rich treasure of insights about the nature of man, his eternal destiny, the sanctity of marriage, and the important role of the family in building a coherent and harmonious society. Catholic Social Teaching, explains Pope Leo, offers a unified worldview. What the Church says about the family is inextricable from what She says about the poor; and what She says about the Eucharist informs the essence of Her teachings on education, the arts and even government. You will step away from these pages with a profound understanding of the root causes of the ills that afflict our society, and, thanks to Pope Leo and Anthony Esolen, well equipped to propose compelling remedies for them. Only an authentically Catholic culture provides for a stable and virtuous society that allows Christians to do the real work that can unite rich and poor. We must reclaim Catholic Social Teaching if we are to transform our society into the ideal mapped out by Pope Leo: a land of sinners, yes, but one enriched with love of God and neighbor and sustained by the very heart of the Church's social teaching: the most holy Eucharist.
©2014 Anthony Esolen (P)2014 Sophia Institute Press