Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It

Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and a Fellow of the British Academy. His previous books include Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (2019). He lives in rural County Durham.

"This is a bold and interesting thesis, and it is presented with a wealth of comments on contentious topics confronting politicians and church leaders alike. It also sketches a vision of how secularists and religious traditionalists might learn from one another and together shape a less divided society." - Canon Robin Gill, Church Times"[The Age of Hitler] offers a wealth of reflections on the topics of historical periodization, historical memory, and the historical foundations of postwar Western morality. It also offers a thoughtful analysis of why those foundations are crumbling and what the consequences might be for Western cultural and spiritual life in the coming years . . . Ryrie is to be commended for encouraging dialogue between progressive secularists and conservative traditionalists." - Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Los Angeles Review of Books"A brilliant exposition of Hitler’s role as the embodiment of evil in the collective imagination of the West – and of what may happen as it starts to fade." - Tom Holland, author of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind"We live amid alarming fractures in the public understanding of our identities, our collective needs and our perils. Alec Ryrie’s little book of contemporary history manages to be both exhilarating and comforting, based on his rare skill in bringing an historian’s cool gaze on our anxious world to assess its ills, and with due modesty to offer some remedial ways forward." - Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford"Rapidly, provocatively, this book shakes the history of the last few decades into a new and persuasive shape, and asks the question we all need to answer: how shall we orient ourselves, how shall we understand good and evil, when the old taboos are breaking down, and the horrors of the past are losing their strength as guard-rails?" - Francis Spufford, author of Red Plenty and the Booker Prize-longlisted Light Perpetual"With his lissome prose, Alec Ryrie is a brilliant guide in the best of the essayist tradition, who empowers us to face the formidable moral questions of our age not as victims but through critical self-examination, ethical reflection, and compassionate action. Who are we? The appeal to self-awareness is neither otherworldly nor moralizing. Rather, like the great Montaigne, Ryrie meets us in the middle of his and our lives, offering rich and humane historical reflections as wisdom in our consumerist, perpetually online, and post-truth realities. This is an extraordinary book with which you don't need to be in full agreement to emerge radically transformed into a more enlightened and charitable person in a fraught age." - Bruce Gordon, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Yale Divinity School