In reviewing Adam Gopnik’s A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism, Howard Schneider writes that Gopnik celebrates liberalism and argues that liberalism “has been the source of all that’s civically decent and humane in the world for at least the last two centuries.” Schneider also takes exception with Gopnik’s characterization of John Updike, who is referenced in the volume:

“Two perhaps nitpicking points, but I think the author is wrong about them. Was John Updike really ‘religiously obsessed’? Yes, some of his novels incisively assay religiosity, but he was too urbane to be besotted with religion. Gopnik also suggests that good science can’t thrive in a tyranny. Nazi Germany and North Korea, unfortunately, prove otherwise.”

“A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism”