Historical, philosophical, witty and surprising, Tim Stanley's Whatever Happened to Tradition? makes a passionate case for why fidelity to the past is essential to happiness in the future. The West feels lost. Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus: we hurtle from one crisis to another, lacking definition, terrified that our best days are behind us. The central argument of this book is that we can only face the future with hope if we have a proper sense of tradition - political, social and religious. We ignore our past at our peril. Some of the concepts defended here are highly controversial in the modern West: authority, nostalgia, rejection of self and the hunt for spiritual transcendence. Stanley illustrates how apparently eccentric yet universal principles can nurture the individual from birth to death, plugging them into the wider community and creating a bond between generations. The good news, he argues, is that it can also be rebuilt. It's been done before. The process is fraught with danger, but the ultimate prize of rediscovering tradition is self-knowledge and freedom.