Mortality and Faith By David Horowitz

Mortality and Faith

Reflections on a Journey Through Time

A Political Warrior’s Moving Last Chapter

By David Horowitz

David Horowitz’s Mortality and Faith: Reflections on a Journey through Time brings to completion one of the most remarkable autobiographies of recent decades. The long-awaited sequel to Radical Son, which George Gilder called "The first great American autobiography of his generation," Morality and Faith has been hailed as "a masterpiece of autobiography... a poignantly beautiful testament. 

The story that began with Horowitz's bestselling memoir Radical Son, concludes here with three collected works - The End of Time, A Point in Time, and You’re Going to Be Dead One Day - and ends with a reflective coda, Staying Alive, as Horowitz looks beyond his lifetime of passionate political engagement to take stock of what it means to believe, to doubt, and to face the inevitability of death. His journey has taken him from the restless radicalism of his youth to the mature contentment of a happy warrior who has found a philosophical place of resignation, contemplation, and peace.

Horowitz explores the spiritual life as a skeptic and a seeker. Confronting his own intimations of mortality, he drafts a blueprint for hope. Meditating deeply on the works of Marcus Aurelius, Saul Bellow, Blaise Pascal, and Dostoevsky and mining the wisdom of the Bible, Horowitz writes beautifully about the end of his journey and its ultimate meaning. Even as his memories fade, his body weakens, and his loved ones pass away, he sees a light that obliterates despair and gives him courage. Horowitz takes on his lifetime quest to understand the well-springs of radicalism, including the inspiration for the attackers of 9/11 and the two types of faith that govern all of our historical destines.

"Eloquently written with even more passion and introspection" than Radical Son itself, Mortality and Faith has been called "a big, chewy chomp into life’s big, hard questions: Why are you here? What is 'here' anyway? What happens after we die? How does death affect life?" It is also an intensely personal book with a story of family and love at its center, and is the author’s ongoing encounters with the hazards of age. [more...]

"Beautifully written, unflinching in its contemplation of the abyss, and yet finally hopeful in its acceptance of human finitude." 

-- Literary critic and political liberal Stanley Fish

"A poignant and elegiac reflection on life from a man who bears the burden of unknowing with courage and grace."

-- Andrew Klavan

"I have admired David Horowitz for decades. He has taught me many important lessons. But never have I been so moved by his writing than I am by this profound book."

--Dennis Prager

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David Horowitz is a bestselling author of political and autobiographical works on life, love, and mortality. His many books include the classic Radical Son, a memoir of his communist childhood, youthful radicalism, and intellectual journey in middle age to the other side of the political spectrum, and numerous works of political analysis, such as Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes and Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan for Defeating the Left.