Ross Douthat
American conservative political commentator and author; New York Times op-ed columnist who writes on politics, religion, and culture; author of books including Bad Religion (2012) and The Decadent Society (2019).
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. Grand New Party
How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream
A forward-looking manifesto arguing that the conservative movement should reinvent itself by pairing market-oriented economics with proactive, community-based social policies to win over working-class and immigrant voters; it critiques past strategies, emphasizes moral seriousness and pragmatism, and offers concrete proposals—education choice, immigration reform tied to assimilation, welfare and entitlement redesign, and decentralization of governance—intended to broaden the coalition and present a practical alternative to liberalism while preserving limited-government principles.
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2. Privilege
Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class
A candid memoir and cultural critique that interweaves personal anecdotes from an elite university with broader analysis of how American institutions groom a ruling class, arguing that prestige, social networks, secularized moral frameworks, and ideological conformity combine to reproduce privilege and distance elites from democratic accountability while eroding spiritual seriousness and civic responsibility.
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3. The Decadent Society
How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
A sharp diagnosis of contemporary Western decline that argues society is not collapsing dramatically but slipping into a quieter decadence: an era of slowed technological and economic dynamism, aging and risk-averse elites, weakened civic institutions, cultural exhaustion, and demographic stagnation that favors comfort, spectacle, and private life over ambitious public projects. The narrative surveys historical parallels and policy, cultural, and moral causes for this stasis, outlines possible outcomes—further decay, renewed activism, or abrupt crisis—and urges a restoration of seriousness, institutional vigor, and long-term thinking to reverse the drift.
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