An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America—the latest from Catholic essayist and pundit Joseph Bottum—is a book about the religious dimension of American public life. And it’s about the rise of a social class with outsized influence on the shape of American culture, a group he calls post-Protestants.
But it’s a tough book to categorize, and perhaps even tougher to evaluate. It’s an interpretation of America’s past, but I wouldn’t call it a work of history. There are no footnotes, not many direct quotes, and regular sweeping assertions with little attempt at support. Its main conversation partners are sociological standards, but I wouldn’t call it a work of sociology either. There are no charts, no surveys collected and analyzed, and no field research to speak of.
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