Advance Praise For 'Living In Wonder'
Read What Smart People Are Saying About My Re-Enchantment Book
Now that we have come to the end of the blurb-gathering period — Living In Wonder goes to press in two weeks — I want to share with you the advance praise the book has collected. Please click on that link to pre-order from Amazon, or here to go to Eighth Day Books, to exclusively pre-order a signed copy. UK readers should know that Living In Wonder will be simultaneously published in late October there, by Hodder (UK readers click here to pre-order). I’ll be in London promoting it then. The launch in the US will happen in Birmingham, Alabama, on or around October 22 (the publication date), and will feature an appearance by me and Paul Kingsnorth. More details about all that when we have it nailed down.
Here are the blurbs we have on hand now. I think there may be one or two others yet to come:
Open this book and it gets real weird, real fast. Or don’t open it – things are going to get weird anyway. A society founded on the dogmatic exclusion of everything that eludes reductive explanation will ultimately find itself at a loss, and this is now our situation. As the crisis of the West unfolds, we have begun to get an inkling that our picture of reality has been cramped and partial. The good news is that this bewilderment makes our time pregnant with the possibility of discovery. In Living In Wonder, Rod Dreher tells us that “The world is not what we think it is. It is far more mysterious, exciting and adventurous.” Transcending cultural doom-saying, Dreher achieves, and invites us to, a new freshness of spirit. -- Matthew B. Crawford, New York Times bestselling author of The World Beyond Your Head and the Archedelia Substack
The yawning gulf beneath the surface of our culture is becoming clearer every day, but Rod Dreher shows us that it doesn’t have to be this way. The world is enchanted, magical, and soaked with God. Our ancestors knew it, here in the West as elsewhere. Modernity has hidden this truth from us, but it can’t be hidden forever. Living in Wonder points the way out of the delusions of our modern dream, and back towards reality. This is an important book. -- Paul Kingsnorth, novelist and author of The Abbey Of Misrule Substack
A brave, lucid and absolutely compelling book. Dreher brings his substantial storytelling skills to a subject in turns both disturbing and visionary: the business of enchantment. We live in a time of peril and opportunity, and Rod-as-guide leads us through the swamps and snares of a world on fire. He reveals a God with a soft spot for beauty, and the urgent need to cleave to his presence amongst the trance-states of much modern life. This is antidote to anyone perceiving Christianity as a worn-out husk, rather a vessel of wonder and vocation. Dreher is holding a light in the dark with this, maybe his most important book. — Dr Martin Shaw, author of Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild In the Time of the Spyglass
Rod Dreher has a knack for putting his finger on what people will be talking about next. Re-enchantment will be one of the big themes of the coming years, and Living in Wonder is your guide to it. Dreher takes us on a tour of what is already happening in the world, as people turn to psychedelics, the occult, UFOs and more in a search for spiritual meaning amidst the barrenness of modernity. And he shows us how true and healthy re-enchantment is found only in Christianity. -- Aaron Renn, author, Life In The Negative World
Living in Wonder captures the tectonic shift happening deep under politics, culture and in many ways under religion. Dreher sees how the worldview set to replace Enlightenment Rationalism is already here. This new world is full of living presence, glimmering with intelligences that act on and through us. Hopefully, with his help, we can learn to discern the spirits. -- Jonathan Pageau, host, The Symbolic World
Remember y’all:
US readers can pre-order from Amazon here
Or, if you prefer a signed copy, pre-order from Eighth Day Books exclusively here
UK readers can pre-order from Amazon.co.uk here.
As of now, there will be French and Spanish editions coming, plus even more, I think.
And you are always invited to become a paid subscriber to this Substack, where we talk about living in wonder five days a week (as well as living in this crazypants world).
We're cheering for this one!
"You ordered ANOTHER book because that Dreher guy mentioned it?! What?! Oh, he wrote it?! Big deal, I don't care - you have too many books on the nightstand as it is! Tell him to stop!"