ALIENS IN AMERICA

What Else They're Saying...

"Professor Lawler brilliantly lays out the modern conception of the human person. [He] spends almost 300 pages making a shambles of this desire to reduce the human being to a mere animal. In other words, Lawler reminds us that we are not to be at home in this world. We are aliens. Our true home lies elsewhere and in the presence of Another."
— Clarion Herald

"Mr. Lawler writes from the standpoint of religious faith; he wants to elevate human life above a state of bobo complacency."
— Washington Times

"What Lawler sees, and others don't, is that the preoccupation with health—along with the other Bobo preoccupation, material prosperity—flows out of their spiritual vision, or more precisely, the lack thereof. It is because they aren't concerned with matters of personal salvation, and the God that goes with such an idea, that they elevate health (and prosperity) from a means to an end to an end in itself. It stands to reason that people for whom this life is really all that matters would seek to extend and enhance that life by any means at their disposal, even if it means, as Lawler puts it, the "gradual surrender of the qualities that actually distinguish us as human beings."
— Boundless Webzine

"Lawler's latest offering, Aliens in America: The Strange Truth About Our Souls, takes [Francis] Fukuyama to task for elevating human comfort above standards of right and wrong. Mr. Lawler writes from the standpoint of religious faith; he wants to elevate human life above a state of bobo complacency."
— Washington Times

"[L]awler's Aliens in America is an interesting and worthwhile book. In describing the intellectual currents currently in motion around him, Lawler implicitly and explicitly lays out his own position; and it is one likely to attract thoughtful adherents."
— Weekly Standard

"Exceptional."
— Today's Books

"[L]awler thoughtfully separates what is questionable from what is noble and true in the thought of the figures he discusses. Throughout the book, Lawler provokes serious thought about the philosophical and religious foundations of American politics."
— Booklist

"Americans are always on the lookout for experts with the latest advice on how to be happy. They should listen to Peter Lawler—a daring new social critic who analyzes the condition of our souls. His advice: Give up therapy and have the courage to admit that a certain amount of unhappiness and anxiety are signs of our nature as self-conscious mortals, living as pilgrims on earth as God intended us to live after the fall. Against the experts, Lawler challenges us to resist the sweet lullaby of the end of history and to reject the subhuman contentment of the theraputic welfare state. By reinterpreting the American founding as an incomplete version of Christian natural law, Lawler deftly leads us to a mature understanding of human liberty driven by restless longings for nobility and eternity."
— Bob Kraynak, Professor of Political Science, Colgate University

"Accounting for the intellectual meanderings of our lives and being is a full-time occupation. Peter Augustine Lawler, in this most insightful book, again proves himself to be one of the best contemporary writers in this enterprise of explaining ourselves to ourselves. Lawler shows how a proper philosophy of being serves to order the aberrations and diverse attempts to explain us in terms other than those of a genuine philosophy of being."
— James V. Schall, Georgetown University

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