Description: Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer is the first sustained treatment of Percy as a political thinker. The book argues that Percy provides a distinctive approach to politics, one that might allow us to give up the dangerous longing for limitless progress and perfection in our lives.
Brief description: Lee Trepanier, Assumption University, USA
Review Quotes:
"Smith's book has excellent insights on Percy's relevance to race, social science, and philosophy." --Christianity Today
"Brian A. Smith's Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer is an extraordinary exploration of the writings of a sadly underappreciated observer of the American soul. . . . Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer is a significant accomplishment and deserves careful reading. Smith has the uncanny ability to weave the disparate threads of Percy's writings into a cogent narrative understandable even to those less familiar with the author's work. . . . As for Smith's work, perhaps the greatest among its manymerits is that it whets the appetite just enough to entice readers to revisit Percy's novels yet again." --Interpretation "This is an elegant and meticulous presentation of the political thought in existential context of America's most original and deepest thinker of the 20th century. It's obviously the result of years of reflection, and it might well be the best book ever published on Walker Percy. Smith, in fact, has not just written a book on this philosopher-novelist, but on the truth about who we are and what we're supposed to do." --Peter Augustine Lawler, Berry College