Welcome to Life Under Compulsion How do you raise a child who can sit with a good book and read? Who is moved by beauty? Who doesn't have to buy the latest this or that vanity? Who is not bound to the instant urge, wherever it may be found? As a parent, you've probably asked these questions. And now Anthony Esolen provides the answers in this wise new book, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. Although freedom has become a byword of our age, Esolen reveals that our children are anything but free. In fact, they are becoming slaves to compulsions. Some compulsions come from without: government mandates that determine what children are taught, how they are taught, and even what they can eat in school. Others come from within: the itches that must be scratched, the passions by which children (like the rest of us) can be mastered. Common Core, smartphones, video games, sex ed, travel teams, Twitter, politicians, popular music, advertising, a world with more genders than there are flavors of ice cream—these and many other aspects of contemporary life come under Esolen's sweeping gaze in Life Under Compulsion. This elegantly written book restores lost wisdom about education, parenting, literature, music, art, philosophy, and leisure. Esolen shows why the common understanding of freedom—as a permission slip to do as you please—is narrow, misleading . . . and dangerous. He draws on great thinkers of the Western tradition, from Aristotle and Cicero to Dante and Shakespeare to John Adams and C. S. Lewis, to remind us what human freedom truly means. Life Under Compulsion also restates the importance of concepts so often dismissed today: truth, beauty, goodness, love, faith, and virtue. But above all else, it reminds us of a fundamental truth: that a child is a human being. Countercultural in the best sense of the term, Life Under Compulsion is an indispensable guide for any parent who wants to help a child remove the shackles and enjoy a truly free, and full, life.

How do you raise a child who can sit with a good book and read? Who is moved by beauty? Who doesn’t have to buy the latest this or that vanity? Who is not bound to the instant urge, wherever it may be found? As a parent, you’ve probably asked these questions. And now Anthony Esolen provides the answers in this wise new book, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. Esolen reveals that our children are becoming slaves to compulsions. Some compulsions come from without: government mandates that determine what children are taught, how they are taught, and even what they can eat in school. Others come from within: the itches that must be scratched, the passions by which children (like the rest of us) can be mastered. Common Core, smartphones, video games, sex ed, travel teams, Twitter, politicians, popular music, advertising, a world with more genders than there are flavors of ice cream—these and many other aspects of contemporary life come under Esolen’s sweeping gaze in Life Under Compulsion. This elegantly written book restores lost wisdom about education, parenting, literature, music, art, philosophy, and leisure. Esolen shows why the common understanding of freedom—as a permission slip to do as you please—is narrow, misleading, and dangerous. He draws on great thinkers of the Western tradition, from Aristotle and Cicero to Dante and Shakespeare to John Adams and C. S. Lewis, to remind us what human freedom truly means. Life Under Compulsion also restates the importance of concepts so often dismissed today: truth, beauty, goodness, love, faith, and virtue. But above all else, it reminds us of a fundamental truth: that a child is a human being. Countercultural in the best sense of the term, Life Under Compulsion is an indispensable guide for any parent who wants to help a child remove the shackles and enjoy a truly free and full life.

Play dates, soccer practice, day care, political correctness, drudgery without facts, television, video games, constant supervision, endless distractions: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, in a bitingly witty style reminiscent of C. S. Lewis, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind. But Esolen doesn’t stop at pointing out the problem; he offers clear solutions as well. With charming stories from his own boyhood and an assist from the master authors and thinkers of the Western tradition, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child is a welcome respite from the overwhelming banality of contemporary culture. Interwoven throughout this indispensable guide to child rearing is a rich tapestry of the literature, music, art, and thought that once enriched the lives of American children. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child confronts contemporary trends in parenting and schooling by reclaiming lost traditions. This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent who cares about the paltry thing that childhood has become, and who wants to give a child something beyond the dull drone of today’s culture.

"Out of the Ashes is a full-throated, stout-hearted call to arms—soul-stirring,uncompromising, and irresistible." —ROD DREHER, author of The Benedict Option "Out of the Ashes is an astonishing combination of energy, humor, insight, and exceptional erudition, topped off by a vivid personal style and a special gift for tweaking the nose of secularist nonsense-peddlers. If you’re looking for a guide to our current cultural predicament (and how to fix it), one that’s sobering and invigorating at the same time, start with this book." —CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia "Anthony Esolen is one of our nation’s best writers because he’s one of our best thinkers. Out of the Ashes is vintage Esolen: eloquent, bold, insightful, profound." — RYAN T. ANDERSON, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation, and author of Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and ReligiousFreedom What do you do when an entire civilization is crumbling around you? You do everything. This is a book about how to get started. The Left’s culture war threatens America’s foundation and its very civilization, warns Esolen in his brand new book, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture. They will tell you that babies in the womb are fetuses, that gender is a social construct, and that the backbone of society is government not the community. In Out of the Ashes, Esolen outlines his surprisingly simple plan to take back American culture— start at home. Esolen urges us to demand a return to values in our homes, our schools, our churches, and our communities, and to reject political correctness. “We must become tellers of truth again—and people who are willing to hear truths, especially when it hurts to hear them.”

Gary Trosclair explores the power of the driven personality and the positive outcomes those with obsessive compulsive personality disorder can achieve through a mindful program of harnessing the skills that can work, and altering those that serve no one. If you were born with a compulsive personality you may become rigid, controlling, and self-righteous. But you also may become productive, energetic, and conscientious. Same disposition, but very different ways of expressing it. What determines the difference? Some of the most successful and happy people in the world are compelled by powerful inner urges that are almost impossible to resist. They’re compulsive. They’re driven. But some people with a driven personality feel compelled by shame or insecurity to use their compulsive energy to prove their worth, and they lose control of the wheel of their own life. They become inflexible and critical perfectionists who need to wield control, and they lose the point of everything they do in the process. A healthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement are used consciously in the service of passion, love and purpose. An unhealthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement have been hijacked by fear and its henchman, anger. Both are driven: one by meaning, the other by dread. The Healthy Compulsive: Healing Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Taking the Wheel of the Driven Personality, will serve as the ultimate user’s guide for those with a driven personality, including those who have slid into obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Unlike OCD, which results in specific symptoms such as repetitive hand-washing and intrusive thoughts, OCPD permeates the entire personality and dramatically affects relationships. It also requires a different approach to healing. Both scientifically informed and practical, The Healthy Compulsive describes how compulsives get off track and outlines a four-step program to help them consciously cultivate the talents and passions that are the truly compelling sources of the driven personality. Drawing from his 25 years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist and Jungian psychoanalyst, and his own personal experience as someone with a driven personality, Trosclair offers understanding, inspiring stories of change, and hope to compulsives and their partners about how to move to the healthy end of the compulsive spectrum.

On a rainy October evening, Pastor Vance Howard is hoping for a quiet evening at home. But that all changes with one phone call. Now he finds himself sitting high up on the town's water tower, drawn into a conversation with a suicidal man named Jake. A man who bring to light the horrors of Vance's own past. Horrors that cause Vance to question his faith, his sanity, and everything he thought he was capable of. Compulsion is the story that causes one to ask: Is there a limit to forgiveness...? Two Bonus Short Stories also included: Strange in the Woods & Evil Human Clown

Using in-depth case studies, Can’t Just Stop examines the science behind both mild and extreme compulsive behavior—“a fascinating read about human behavior and how it can go haywire” (The Charlotte Observer). Whether shopping with military precision or hanging the tea towels just so, compulsion is something most of us have witnessed in daily life. But compulsions exist along a broad continuum and, at the opposite end of these mild forms, exist life-altering disorders. Sharon Begley’s meticulously researched book is the first to examine all of these behaviors together—from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to hoarding, to compulsive exercise, even compulsions to do good. They may look profoundly different, but these behaviors are all ways of coping with varying degrees of anxiety. Sharing personal stories from dozens of interviewees, “Begley combines a personal topic with thoughtfulness and sensitivity” (Library Journal) and gives meaningful context to their plight. Along the way she explores the role of compulsion in our fast-paced culture, the brain science behind it, and strange manifestations of the behavior throughout history. Can’t Just Stop makes compulsion comprehensible and accessible, with “fresh insight that could fundamentally alter how we think of, and treat, mental illness going forward” (Publishers Weekly).

Pastor T. C. Ryan narrates the unsettling story of his lifelong struggle with sexual addiction, one that predated and pervaded his pastoral ministry--one that went on for years in secrecy and isolation. In light of his full experience of exile and healing, Ryan calls the church to a ministry of unsettling grace that is the worthy of the gospel.

Western civilization has no more eloquent defender than Anthony Esolen. he has taken up its mantle and been persecuted for doing so. More than most, Esolen knows the vital importance that its foundational principles still hold today. If we hope to regain today's culture, we must be reminded of the truths that too many have forgotten. Following on his compelling prior volume Defending Marriage, Esolen returns, this time in defense of boys and an experience of boyhood that is on the wane, if not extinguished, in many quarters of the modern world. He masterfully illuminates the threats our precious sons face from the purveyors and promoters of political correctness, too often hiding in plain sight. And he tackles head-on the misguided and ultimately doomed--though not before it has done much mischief--project of blurring the distinctions between boys and girls. Drawing on his own in many ways all-American boyhood, Esolen, at times wistfully, at times playfully, and at times prophetically--in the literal sense of employing the thunder of an Old Testament prophet--details what a good boyhood once was and what it can be again.

Blending memoir and blistering social observations, the author of The F*ck It Diet looks back at her desperate attempts to heal her hunger, anxiety, and imperfections through extreme diets, culty self-help methods, and melodramatic bargains with the universe. Offering a frank and funny critique of the cultural forces that are driving us mad, Caroline Dooner examines how treating ourselves like never ending self-improvement projects is a recipe for burnout. We have become unknowingly complicit in perpetuating our own exhaustion because we are treating ourselves like machines. But even phones need to f*cking recharge. Caroline takes a good hard look at the dark side of self-help, and explains how she eventually used a radical period of rest to push back against cultural expectations and reclaim some peace. Tired As F*ck empowers us to say no to the things that exhaust us. It inspires us to carve out time to slow down, feel okay about doing less, and honor our humanity. This is not a self-help book, it’s a cautionary tale. It’s an honest look at the dogma of wellness and spiritual self-improvement culture and revels in the healing power of rest and letting shit go.