Gracious Reader,
This week, we’ll explore:
An exciting way that The Soul of Civility is being brought to life: Join us in Carmel, Indiana, Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024!
New reviews in the LA Review of Books, Law and Liberty, The Dispatch, and more
Looking ahead: Book tour stops in Nashville, TN and Montgomery AL
"How can we embody your book in our city?"
Happy New Year! I hope you had a restorative holiday season, and are feeling hopeful as we enter 2024.
There are many things I’m thankful for as I enter the new year.
First: YOU!
Friends, readers, collaborators—thank you for being here and for your passion for lifelong learning and the power of beauty, goodness and truth to help us lead richer lives now.
Second: the abundant opportunities this year holds.
Take a look at the rich and full 2024 book tour schedule—that’s thanks to supporters and readers such as you who made book talks and events happen!
Third: the opportunity to see my book, The Soul of Civility, reach and help people.
My book is about the most important question of our day: How might we flourish across difference? I harness he power of history, ideas and storytelling to shed light on how we each might be part of the solution today.
On that note, I received a particularly lovely email this past November from one reader of my book who was eager to put its ideas into practice: Jeff Worrell, the President of the City Counsil in Carmel, Indiana, a community close to where I live in Indianapolis.
[Side note, for context: for anyone who has seen the hit sitcom Parks and Rec—and if you haven’t you should!—Indianapolis is like Pawnee, and Carmel is like Eagleton, the lovely and wealthy suburb that is Pawnee’s competition!]
“How can we embody your book in our city?” Carmel’s City Counsil President Jeff Worrell wrote to me.
This is every writer’s dream—or at least, it’s this writer’s dream. I wrote my book to help people, to make the world a better, brighter and more gentle place for my children to grow up in.
To have people as excited to do so as I am is affirming. I’m thankful.
And now, just a few weeks and several conversations later, we’re partnering on a large community-wide event hosted by the Carmel Public Library.
Join us Jan 10th if you’re in the area!
Read about the event: Here, here, & here.
And there are other exciting collaborations, “Civility School,” a civility manifesto, partnerships with schools and chambers of commerce, and more. The plan is to create a pilot that other communities and cities can replicate.
Hope you can join us in person or at the livestream
The Soul of Civility in the news
The Los Angeles Review of Books reviewed my book. Even though it was someone who is of a different ideological persuasion than me that reviewed the book, they still called it "unexpectedly compelling… deeply informed.”
The Dispatch commissioned a thoughtful review of my book.
In Law & Liberty, the Aspen Institute’s Todd Breyfogle wrote what is perhaps my favorite review so far! Read it here.
Book tour spotlight
The book tour continues apace in 2024!
This weekend, I’ll be at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, TN, just outside of Nashville. Join us!
Later this month, I’ll be in Montgomery, Alabama, Washington, and Montana.
See the full book tour schedule here. Don’t see you town on the book tour schedule, but would like to?
Write to me at ah@alexandraohudson.com.
Thank you for being part of the Civic Renaissance Community, and Happy New Year!
Very cool, thanks for your great work Lexi! Civility is a core virtue of a classical education.