
Anthony Esolen is the author of over twenty-five books and over 1,000 articles in both scholarly and general interest journals. A senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, Esolen is known for his elegant essays on the faith and for his clear social commentaries. His articles appear regularly in Touchstone, Crisis, First Things, Public Discourse, The Catholic Thing, Chronicles, Inside the Vatican, and Magnificat, among others. An accomplished poet in his own right, Esolen is known for his widely acclaimed three-volume verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Modern Library). His Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child has been described as "a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man." And its sequel, Life Under Compulsion, has been called "essential reading for parents, educators, and anyone who is concerned to rescue children from the tedious and vacuous thing childhood has become." His recent books of social commentary include Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and the forthcoming, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends upon the Strength of Men. Anthony Esolen has been writing his own poetry for decades, but until recently most of his published poetry has appeared in his verse translations of the great poets, Dante, Tasso, and Lucretius. More than a hundred of his own poems have appeared in such venues as Fine Madness, The Plains Poetry Journal, and Modern Age. After studying and teaching great poetry for nearly thirty years, Professor Esolen set out to write a book-length unified poem of his own, a project which he hopes will show that serious and significant long poetic works can still be written in our time. The result of his effort is The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, a book-length single poem composed of 100 parts—short lyrics, dramatic monologues, and hymns—centered on the life of Christ. He is working now on a second such long poem, The Twelve-Gated City, a collection of 144 interrelated poems centered on the parable of the prodigal son. The grandson of Italian immigrants to America, Anthony Esolen was born and raised in the coal-mining country of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, and his Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Fellow. He is the 2020 recipient of the CIRCE Institute's Russel Kirk Prize, awarded each year to a writer and scholar "in honor of a lifetime dedicated to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue." He is writer-in-residence at Magdalen College in Warner, NH. For more from the mind and pen of Anthony Esolen, visit his online magazine called Word and Song, at https://anthonyesolen.substack.com

How Building Forts, Reading Stories, Playing Ball, and Praying to God Can Change the World
2019

Twelve Arguments for Sanity
2014

2019

The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature
2007

Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child
2015

Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men
2022

Going Home in a Homeless World
2018

Rebuilding American Culture
2007

A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church
2016

2014

1758

The Demolition of the Western Mind
2020

2010

Songs for the Lord
2019

2008

The Ancient World From Gilgamesh to Augustine
2020