[UCP Books]: Why Niebuhr Now?
“It is a genuine blessing that John Patrick Diggins left us this brilliant reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr. In crisp and eloquent prose, his book explains as well as anything I have seen why we experiencing a revival of our appreciation for Niebuhr—and, more importantly, why this is a very good thing. Diggins, like Niebuhr, always defied philosophical pigeonholing and, also like Niebuhr, never sought to evade the most difficult moral questions. If one may say so, this match of subject and author was made in heaven.”
E. J. Dionne
WHY NIEBUHR NOW?
John Patrick Diggins
| Publication Date: August 15, 2011 | $22.00 • £14.00 |
| International publication date: August 30, 2011 | 978-0-226-14883-0 |
“Why Niebuhr Now? is much richer than one might expect from its 117-page length. At the end of his life, Diggins, it seems, summoned his powerful grasp of both American intellectual and Christian history to expertly contextualize Niebuhr while also explaining his beliefs. . . . Like many an American thinker skilled at enduring maxims, Niebuhr faced and still faces the problem of being reduced to an aphorist for that quintessential American product: the higher form of greeting card. In his final work, Diggins does the best any scholar possibly could to rescue Niebuhr from that fate.”
Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education
During his lifetime, John Patrick Diggins produced a seemingly unending stream of books, all of them marked by a rare combination of wide-ranging intellectual history and highly opinionated commentary. It comes as a welcome surprise to learn that the stream did not dry up with his death. His partner, his former student, and his editor have combined to put out this slim, intriguing book on Reinhold Niebuhr. . . . Diggins gets Niebuhr right because, like his subject, Diggins was never a person comfortable with the certainties of either anti-war leftism or triumphalist neo-conservatism.
Alan Wolfe, New Republic