Ivan Illich

“Cayley’s book carries forward and, in many ways, completes the vision Illich had not the time in his relatively short life to fully elaborate and explain.”

—Robert Inchausti Angelus

“I recently suggested to a thoughtful Catholic friend that he read Cayley’s biography as an introduction to Illich’s ideas. Encountering my friend a few weeks later, he thanked me, adding simply, ‘It has changed my life.’”

—Elias Crim America Magazine

“This opus represents many, many evenings of intelligent, friendly, and finally life-changing dialogue that culminate in a near-symphonic quality. Cayley’s deep understanding and clear prose pull a complex, balanced harmony out of themes that to the casual reader of Illich could seem eclectic.”

—Marcus Rempel Clarion: Journal for Religion, Peace, and Justice

“David Cayley, who conducted two lengthy radio interviews-turned-books with Illich (in 1988 and 2000) and had a decades-long friendship with him, has written a gripping and unconventional biography of this deeply unconventional man.”

—Michael J. Sauter Front Porch Republic

“Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey can itself be seen as an act of love, restoring Illich to his rightful place among the significant social and religious thinkers of our time.”

—Brian C. Anderson First Things

“Ivan Illich’s work offers us a much needed intellectual and spiritual balm in a time distinguished by the untidy dissolution of certainties. But such a balm is not purchased by cheap grace. It is costly; it requires a new visioning. David Cayley’s retrieval of this ‘vanishing clergyman’ offers a way forward in a darkening landscape.”

—Michael W. Higgins Literary Review of Canada

“A crucial contribution to Illich’s rediscovery.”

—Geoff Shullenberger American Affairs

“After years of reading Illich, Cayley’s genealogy—richly documented and carefully argued—provides the definitive account of how to make sense of one of the last great polymaths and cultural critics.”

—Myles Werntz Reading Religion

“Illich provides a vocabulary for identifying both the core assumptions underwriting these responses (from systems thinking to the imperatives of medically defined ‘life’) as well as challenging counterproductive interventions and their ‘well-intended’ justifications. For the contemporary legibility of his life and thought in this way - and innumerable ways for readers to discover – we owe a debt of gratitude to David Cayley.”

—Oscar Krüger Environmental Values

“Cayley convincingly illuminates how Illich’s thought developed and how it revolves around certain central insights: complementarity, the vernacular, incarnation, and a reading of history that sees the West as a deviation from the Gospel. In so doing, Cayley reconnects Illich with the work of important contemporary social theorists—Latour, Agamben, Milbank, and others—and shows how Illich anticipated their work in many ways.  This book is unique, much needed, and masterfully executed.”

—William Cavanaugh, author of Field Hospital: The Church's Engagement with a Wounded World

“No other book yet published summarizes and synthesizes Illich’s life and thought at this length and in this detail. It is a much-needed intervention with sustained political, social, philosophical, and theological resonance. Cayley’s book should now form the starting point for all future critical conversation around Illich’s varied, generative, challenging, and often surprising ideas.”

—Simon Ravenscroft, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge