We’ve pursued and achieved the modern dream of defining ourselves—but at what cost? An influential columnist and editor makes a compelling case for seeking the inherited traditions and ideals that give our lives meaning. “Ahmari’s tour de force makes tradition astonishingly vivid and relevant for the here and now.”—Rod Dreher, bestselling author of Live Not by Lies and The Benedict Option As a young father and a self-proclaimed “radically assimilated immigrant,” opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari realized that when it comes to shaping his young son’s moral fiber, today’s America is woefully lacking. For millennia, the world’s great ethical and religious traditions have taught that true happiness lies in pursuing virtue and accepting limits. But now, unbound from these stubborn traditions, we are free to choose whichever way of life 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. The result is a society riven by deep conflict and individual lives that, for all their apparent freedom, are marked by alienation and stark unhappiness. 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 for? What do we owe our parents, our bodies, one another? Exploring each question through the lives and ideas of great thinkers, from Saint Augustine to Howard Thurman and from Abraham Joshua Heschel to Andrea Dworkin, Ahmari invites us to examine the hidden assumptions that drive our behavior and, in doing so, to live more humanely in a world that has lost its way.

The great Persian classic known as the Shahname, or Book of Kings, completed in the eleventh century A.D. by the poet Abol-Qasem Ferdowsi, describes the pre-Islamic history of Persia from mythological times down to the invasion of the armies of Islam in the mid-seventh century A.D. From this long saga, Jerome W. Clinton has translated into English blank verse the most famous episode, the tragic story of Sohrab and Rostam. In this new edition, Clinton has revised and corrected his translation to make it more fluent and idiomatic, capturing more closely the narrative power of the original poem. The Persian text appears on facing pages.

The Iranian poet and painter Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) is revered today for many of the things he was criticized for during his lifetime. Born and raised in the ancient city of Kashan, he was educated in Tehran and travelled widely. A gentle introvert by nature, he was accused of escapism when his reaction to the world around him was to go back to nature, mysticism and mythology, poetry and painting. This mystic of the twentieth century seeks a light that radiates from the individual soul and ultimately affects its relationship with others and the world around it. While Rumi, the mystic of the thirteenth century, dances, sings, and chants out loud that he comes from the world of spirit and is a stranger in the world of matter, Sepehri, quietly aware of humanity in a milieu alien to its physical, psychological, and spiritual needs, in poetry and painting, appeared to stroke human consciousness into a tranquility, almost a state of beatitude, which nevertheless is never quite free of the ongoing struggle for "awareness, understanding and illumination." Sepehri had a free and sometimes convoluted approach to the verities of life, insisting that the book of everyday "illusions" must be closed and ... ... one must rise And walk along the stretch of time, Look at the flowers, hear the enigma. One must run until the end of being ... One must sit close to the unfolding, Some place between rapture and illumination. (Both Line and Space. Bk.8) In this fresh translation, Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid successfully conveys the meaning, feelings, and sensitivity of the Persian original allowing the reader to appreciate the pertinence of Sepehri to the twenty-first century.Sohrab Sepehri, poet and painter, was born in Kashan, Iran in 1928 and was claimed by cancer in 1980. He had an upbringing that tried to discipline and shape him, whether at home or at school, but he was not exactly a conformist. He was an intelligent, sensitive, artistically gifted, poetically expressive, somewhat withdrawn, soft-spoken human being. Sepehri started painting and writing poetry at an early age. He excelled at both. For both he received acclaim and criticism. Now he is enshrined as one of the foremost Iranian poets and painters of the twentieth century. This modern-day aref (mystic), poet. and painter is convincingly sincere in his heartfelt and touching approach to the way we must look at our world, and our fellow humans, in these stressful, problematic times.

Sohrab Ahmari was a teenager living under the Iranian ayatollahs when he decided that there is no God. Nearly two decades later, he would be received into the Roman Catholic Church. In From Fire, by Water, he recounts this unlikely passage, from the strident Marxism and atheism of a youth misspent on both sides of the Atlantic to a moral and spiritual awakening prompted by the Mass. At once a young intellectual’s finely crafted self-portrait and a life story at the intersection of the great ideas and events of our time, the book marks the debut of a compelling new Catholic voice.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News and the New York Times bestselling author of Ship of Fools, a collection of nostalgic writings that underscore America’s long slide from innocence to orthodoxy. Thirty years ago, Tucker Carlson got his first job out of college fact checking for a quarterly magazine, and he went on to write for many other publications before becoming the primetime Fox News host he is today. In The Long Slide, Tucker delivers a few of his favorite pieces—annotated with new commentary and insight—to memorialize the tolerance and diversity of thought that the media used to celebrate instead of punish. In snapshots spanning the 1990s to today, he’ll take you on a visit to Africa with Al Sharpton and members of the Nation of Islam to stop the civil war in Liberia in 2003, inside the (not-so-) secret armies of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and on the campaign trail with Donald Trump in 2016. In case you missed it the first time around, you’ll also learn about the aesthetic merits of British colonialism, the second shift at a baked bean factory, the unexpected charm of James Carville, and the simple beauty of rural western Maine. With his signature wit and 20/20 hindsight, Tucker investigates in this patriotic and memorable collection a question on all of our minds: Has America really changed that much in recent decades? The answer is, unequivocally, yes.

Fairy tales and legends have never ceased to enchant and entertain readers, especially young ones. "The Adventures of Sohrab and the Genie" explores a boy's journey from boyhood to maturity through a series of adventures which teach him a lot about life, kindness and friendship. In order to win the princess' hand, Sohrab must experience things he would never imagine, and face terrible people and situations. At the end, he learns the true meaning of friendship and love, and becomes a new person.

Contemporary art is obsessed with the politics of identity. Visit any contemporary gallery, museum or theatre, and chances are the art on offer will be principally concerned with race, gender, sexuality, power and privilege. The quest for truth, freedom and the sacred has been thrust aside to make room for identity politics. Mystery, individuality and beauty are out; radical feminism, racial grievance and queer theory are in. The result is a drearily predictable culture and the narrowing of the space for creative self-expression and honest criticism. Sohrab Ahmari's book is a passionate cri de coeur against this state of affairs. The New Philistines takes readers deep inside a cultural scene where all manner of ugly, inept art is celebrated so long as it toes the ideological line, and where the artistic glories of the Western world are revised and disfigured to fit the rigid doctrines of identity politics. The degree of politicisation means that art no longer performs its historical function, as a mirror and repository of the human spirit - something that should alarm not just art lovers but anyone who cares about the future of liberal civilisation.