Ezra's Bookshelf

A Time to Build

by Yuval Levin · 230 pages · ~4 hrs

Society & CulturePolitics & Government

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Yuval Levin argues that Americans' current malaise stems from our failure to commit to institutions. Rather than inhabiting and being shaped by institutions—from churches to professional associations to government agencies—we now use them as platforms for personal performance. The result is a society of individuals without the mediating structures that once provided meaning, identity, and constraint. Levin, a conservative thinker who edits National Affairs, ranges across civic, religious, and political institutions to show how they've lost their formative power. He argues that institutions work by shaping character, not just by achieving external goals, and that their decline leaves individuals unmoored. The prescription is not nostalgia for a particular past but rather a renewal of institutional commitment appropriate to our moment. Levin writes with nuance about what institutions require—loyalty, deference, willingness to be formed—and why those requirements have become culturally difficult. This is conservative thought at its most thoughtful, diagnosing problems that cut across political lines.

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