Book Review: ‘The Unbroken Thread’

In October 2020, in the middle of the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis published an encyclical titled Fratelli Tutti, or “All Brothers.” In it, the Holy Father wrote:

Wisdom is not born of quick searches on the internet nor is it a mass of unverified data. That is not the way to mature in the encounter with truth. Conversations revolve only around the latest data; they become merely horizontal and cumulative. We fail to keep our attention focused, to penetrate to the heart of matters, and to recognize what is essential to give meaning to our lives. 

The same sentiment would not have been out of place in Sohrab Ahmari’s book The Unbroken Thread. Framed as a message for his young son, The Unbroken Thread desperately searches for ways that modern men and women can give meaning to their lives. The subtitle, “Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos,” aptly sums up his solution. When society around you seems to be going insane, it is a good idea to look to the past for solace. 

The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos — $16.79

In this sense, The Unbroken Thread is a consolation of sorts. It presents 12 anecdotes, each spotlighting an historical figure from a diverse group that includes St. Augustine, Confucius, and Andrea Dworkin. All of these luminaries found themselves in uncertain and irresolute times, and instead of submitting to the fads of the day, they hewed to certain truths they knew to be inviolable. Despite the Whiggish viewpoint from which we are all taught to interpret history, Ahmari does a good job of demonstrating that our current “Age of Chaos” is not uniquely disordered. Societies and cultures have lost their way in the past—the St. Augustine chapter is especially compelling on this point—but the human story is not foreordained to be one of continued devolution into madness. In other words, there is hope. 

Importantly, in framing the book as advice to his son, Ahmari is able to transcend the “profiles in courage” genre in which it risks getting pigeonholed. Each of the 12 chapters presents an historical figure, yes, but more precisely it addresses how that historical figure dealt with a question relevant to our own time. These include questions that thinkers have pondered over for centuries, if not millennia, such as “How do you justify your life?” and “Is God reasonable?” as well as ones that presuppose an understanding of the current moment, like “Can you be spiritual without being religious?” and “Is sex a private matter”? In 21st century America, some of these are treated as settled questions, and taking the opposing side can get you “canceled.” But all of them are worth taking seriously and thinking about in depth. 

In a chapter on the Roman philosopher Seneca, Ahmari writes, “The life of the mind amounts to vanity, or something worse, if it doesn’t actually improve how we live.” This is a challenge to the reader of The Unbroken Thread. If the book fails in any respect, it is that it doesn’t quite offer a roadmap as to how to use the acts of its worthies to improve one’s own life. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas are phenomenal role models on how to live a saintly life, but the average reader of The Unbroken Thread is not going to be able to write City of God or the Summa Theologica as a rejoinder to our own culture of decadence. 

But that is not a failure on Ahmari’s part. The Unbroken Thread never claims to be any sort of manual. Other, much older books, can help with that. This book’s stated goal is to pose questions that make you think, and on that it succeeds. It is up to the reader to make use of that thinking to improve his or her life.