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A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream Spiral-Bound | January 21, 2020

Yuval Levin

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A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions

Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse.

Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription, rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us and militate against alienation.

As Levin argues, now is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another.


Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Original Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 1541699270
Item Weight: 1.0 lbs
Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.0 x 9.6 inches
"A Time to Build is exactly what America needs right now. A moving call to recommit to the great project of our common life. And from Yuval Levin, one of the most thoughtful and pertinent of our public intellectuals, who writes like a dream if dreams were always clear. What an encouraging book this is, and what an important one."—Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. His previous books include The Fractured Republic and The Great Debate. A former member of the White House domestic policy staff under George W. Bush, he lives in Maryland.