Solzhenitsyn and American Culture

“Solzhenitsyn and American Culture is a superb and coherent collection of essays.” —Lee Congdon, author of The Young Lukács

"Readers will be reminded of his courageous witness, but they will also discern more clearly Solzhenitsyn’s integral relation to Russian literary culture and to writers from the West with whom he bore deep affinities. Solzhenitsyn remains a prophetic intelligence for our time." —Paul J. Contino, co-editor of Bakhtin and Religion

"In reading Solzhenitsyn and American Culture, the mind is enlightened and honed, the will steeled, and our capacity for admiration exercised and nourished. Thanks to the editors and contributors to this volume, they continue to be Solzhenitsyn’s gifts to his American readers." —Paul Seaton, St. Mary's Seminary and University

"Solzhenitsyn and American Culture will deepen Solzhenitsyn's writings in America, which is sorely needed in our country that has ceased to see the purpose and is increasingly willingly to live by lies. We need the wisdom of Solzhenitsyn's reflections on tyranny, so that we can ascend with him to the true heights of man's greatness, which is only found, as he knew, in our Lord." —Richard M. Reinsch II, founding editor of Law and Liberty

"The editors have cast their net wide, so that it will be useful both to those who have read little of Solzhenitsyn (yet are looking for points of entry and orientation before plunging in) and for longtime students of his work—not only scholars (though there is plenty here for them to chew on), but also those blessed souls who read widely on their own dime." —First Things

“[W]ith the end of the Cold War, many journalists, academics, and intellectuals concluded that Solzhenitsyn was no longer relevant. This collection of essays strongly corrects this notion by shedding valuable light on the ‘oft-neglected merits of Solzhenitsyn’s work.’ Most importantly, it aims to consider the continuing relevance of Solzhenitsyn to American culture and politics.” —VoeglinView

“The contributors to this volume embrace Solzhenitsyn’s claim about art’s power to communicate ‘the experiences of [an] entire nation to another nation.’ Not only do they showcase ways in which Russian literature has already instructed Americans . . . but they encourage a new generation of American readers to turn to Russian writers for penetration and inspiration. Foremost among these writers, of course, is Solzhenitsyn.” —Law and Liberty

"Solzhenitsyn and American Culture could serve as an introduction to the writer’s literary work, as a kind of traveler’s guide read before vacation. Or it could be a valuable addition to the nightstand of anyone interested in deepening their knowledge of Solzhenitsyn. The book’s ultimate significance, however, is spiritual. In following Solzhenitsyn’s intellectual footsteps, in taking up his preoccupations with ideology, art, morality, and meaning, the book makes Solzhenitsyn himself into a passageway through which we glimpse the universal. " —Washington Examiner

“Solzhenitsyn and the American Culture should serve as a reminder to those of us in the West that civilization is fragile, that democracy and liberty are forever under attack, that visions of earthly utopias are mirages of danger . . .” —New York Journal of Books

"A new essay collection, 'Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West,' illuminates how the vaunted Russian writer's warnings about secularism and progressivism are as prescient and insightful as ever." —The Federalist

"The book amply demonstrates why Solzhenitsyn remains important to the American conversation in the twenty-first century." —Perspectives on Political Science

"The lesson that students should draw from the study of Solzhenitsyn’s works, and his great soul, is to resist the temptation of thinking that the demonic forces of famine, imprisonment, and mass murder in Russia could never happen in America or in the West." —Religion and Liberty

"The 21 essays contained in Solzhenitsyn and American Culture engage many dimensions of Solzhenitsyn's project in ways that illuminate his ongoing relevance for discerning the task of how to live with virtue and integrity in the cultural setting of contemporary America." —Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity

"This book can be of interest to readers who are familiar with Solzhenitsyn’s work and would like to know more about his impact on Western culture; it can also be of interest to readers who are not familiar with Solzhenitsyn and would like a reason to read him." —The Imaginative Conservative