Yuval Levin's 'A Time to Build' offers a sobering and incisive explanation for why America no longer trusts its institutions, and what to do about it.
By John Thomas

In his 1975 book, Twilight of Authority, renowned sociologist Robert Nisbet warned of “twilight ages,” periods in western history marked by the “decline and erosion of institutions” and an “[i]ndividualism reveal[ed]…less as achievement and enterprise than as egoism and mere performance.” Nisbet also noted of these twilight ages that “[t]he sense of estrangement from community is strong.”

Former Bush administration staffer and founding editor of National Affairs Yuval Levin borrows Nisbet’s imagery in his new book A Time to Build: From Family to Community, to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. According to Levin, although at the beginning of the millennium America seemed poised for a vibrant renewal, the past two decades have been more akin to one of Nisbet’s “twilight ages.” This is especially true regarding America’s many floundering institutions.