Pay in installments of $2.75 with
,
and
Shipping Estimate
USA
- USA
- CAN
- USA
- CAN
Ships within 48 hours · Estimated delivery Sep 18 - Sep 23
Promo Codes Available:
For Your Every Summer RSVP, with Code: SUMMER15
Description
The New Puritans : How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western WorldA sober but devastating skewering of cancel culture and the moral certainties it shares with religious fundamentalism' Sunday Times Engaging, incisive and acute, The New Puritans is a deeply necessary exploration of our current cultural climate and an urgent appeal to return to a truly liberal society. The puritans of the seventeenth century sought to refashion society in accordance with their own beliefs, but they were deep thinkers who were aware of
A sober but devastating skewering of cancel culture and the moral certainties it shares with religious fundamentalism' Sunday Times Engaging, incisive and acute, The New Puritans is a deeply necessary exploration of our current cultural climate and an urgent appeal to return to a truly liberal society. The puritans of the seventeenth century sought to refashion society in accordance with their own beliefs, but they were deep thinkers who were aware of their own fallibility. Today, in the grasp of the new puritans, we see a very different story. Leading a cultural revolution driven by identity politics and so-called 'social justice', the new puritanism movement is best understood as a religion - one that makes grand claims to moral purity and tolerates no dissent. Its disciples even have their own language, rituals and a determination to root out sinners through what has become known as 'cancel culture'. In The New Puritans, Andrew Doyle powerfully examines the underlying belief-systems of this ideology, and how it has risen so rapidly to dominate all major political, cultural and corporate institutions. He reasons that, to move forward, we need to understand where these new puritans came from and what they hope to achieve. Written in the spirit of optimism and understanding, Doyle offers an eloquent and powerful case for the reinstatement of liberal values and explains why it's important we act now.
Shipping Notes
- Free Standard Shipping on $100+ Orders to the USA.
- Except Preorder products are shipped in 48 hours.
- Delivery to the USA:
- Standard Shipping : 3-10 business days
- If time is of the essence, please consider selecting expedited delivery for faster service.
Exchange/Return Notes
- We offer a 30-day return/exchange service after receiving.
- Final sale items are not eligible for returns or exchanges.
- To process your return/exchange, please contact us at [email protected]
- Please click here for more details>>> Return & Exchange Policy
4.6 ★★★★★
Based on 13 reviews
Sort
Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
This book healed me
Format: Paperback
Beautifully written and illustrated. Although Thi Bui and I have astronomically different life experiences, I still found I could relate on a deeply personal level. This book taught me empathy and forgiveness at a time in my life where I struggled to have it. Bui nailed the complicated feelings and emotions that comes with confronting abuse, abusers (who happen to be your parents), and the painful impact of generational trauma on both the parent and child.
Highly recommend this book to anyone who is on a path of healing their own broken heart.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2023
★★★★★ 4
Powerful Family History
Format: Paperback
After the birth of her son, Thi Bui feels an increased sense of urgency about learning the stories of her own parents. Like all but her youngest sibling, she was born in Vietnam, though the children came of age in the United States. While the war itself haunts all of them, was the reason they left their homeland, the wounds her parents bear go far beyond the military conflict. This was only the second graphic novel I’ve ever read (both have been memoirs), and like the first was also selected by my book club. I feel like the limitations of the format mean it will always be a less preferred one for me, because I found myself wanting more words, more depth to the writing itself. But the story is deeply compelling, detailing her father’s brutal childhood, her mother’s much softer one, how they came together, and how the Vietnam War disrupted the future they thought they might have. It’s not as straightforward as “Americans bad”, and Bui is not afraid of the moral ambiguity of that time and place, where the best interests of the majority of the Vietnamese people was an open question for larger forces that seemed to have little room for consideration of what might have actually made regular lives easier to lead. And apart from the larger geopolitical machinations around them, the family had their own share of tragedy, including the death of their first child and a later stillbirth. But three living children and another on the way was enough for her parents to make frantic arrangements to leave, finally succeeding and eventually making their way to the United States. But of course, that was not the end of their story, just the beginning of a new chapter. Bui’s childhood as she depicts it makes it clear that it wasn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but what shines through is her tremendous empathy for her parents and how they became the people she experienced them as. Overarching the narrative is a meditation on parenthood, as it is the birth of her own child that inspires her to ask her parents more. They might have made major mistakes, but it is clear that they loved their children and did what they thought was best for them, making countless sacrifices to give them the best opportunities possible, even if that love was not always shown the way that they wanted and needed to feel it. Vietnamese perspectives on the war in their country were not something I was exposed to growing up (honestly the Vietnam War itself wasn’t something I remember being taught with particular rigor in high school apart from its connection to electoral politics), and I appreciated learning more about the history of the country and how the people who actually lived through the conflict thought about it. Even though this is not my preferred format, I think Bui uses it well to engage in some non-linear storytelling and to very literally illustrate what she’s trying to get it, like the way she parallels the way her relatively rural parents must have felt seeing Saigon for the first time with the way she felt when she first moved to New York, a sense of awe and possibility. It’s a powerful, moving work and I would recommend picking it up!
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Truly, the best we could do
Format: Kindle
An excerpt from my analysis essay I submitted for my literature course: By revisiting her family’s past from before, during, and after the Vietnam War, she gained a deeper understanding of the emotional burdens her parents carried and the sacrifices they made that defined the entirety of their lives. Bui’s illustrated graphic memoir reveals that trauma does not simply disappear over time; instead, it becomes inherited, processed, and transformed. Through this process, Thi Bui is able to move toward empathy for her parents, acceptance of who they are, and a more complete sense of self.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Phenomenal. A must-read!
Format: Paperback
I first learned about this book only a week ago when visiting my sister for Thanksgiving in Eugene, Oregon. We went to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art where I saw some work on display by the author, and there was a copy of her book available to look at, so I perused through and decided to buy it and read it. I'm so glad that I did! This is an incredible, poetic story that spans four generations, multiple wars and conflicts, and examines the fragility of the author's relationship with her parents and with her sense of place and motherhood. This book is one of the best I've read in a long time, and the art is moving and beautiful. It gave me new insight into the struggles of refugee life, and created a truly relatable narrative. I devoured this story in one Saturday. I highly recommend it.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2018
★★★★★ 5
A well composed memoir
Format: Paperback
Full review on nguyentoread.com
The Best We Could Do is Thi Bui's graphic memoir. Thi was born in Vietnam three months before the Vietnam War reached what we consider to be the end of the war. She came to America with her family in 1978. Bui's memoir spans multiple generations. In learning of her mother's and father's pasts, we learn the history of their parents. We see the struggles and pains of two people from very different walks of life trying to live during a time of war and chaos. We see glimpses of the agony everyone in the middle of the Vietnam War faced. Those who were not directly involved on either side but were caught in the middle of larger powers at war. This memoir more closely details the lives of her parents leading up to them arriving in America and making their life there. I was unsure if this memoir would focus largely on the experience of being a Vietnamese immigrant in America. There were parts that showed how it was for Bui's parents in a country where tensions were still high after the Vietnam War, where discrimination largely due to that was overt, and where degrees were not recognized and people who had spent their lives working and creating careers for themselves were not qualified for most work and had to hurdle multiple challenges to learn a language and complete education all over again if they wanted to provide a better life for their children. What Bui so beautifully captures in this memoir is the why behind how her parents were in raising her. Although Bui was born in Vietnam she was young when her family arrived in America. So I think her experience is one that many first generation Vietnamese-American people of my generation can understand and sympathize with. The wanting to know why their parents are the way they are but unable to ask because many have parents, like Bui's mother, who reluctantly share their stories and don't allow their children that glimpse that could help them better understand. In the panel which was most poignant to me, Bui draws her father as he looks over her work that would become The Best We Could Do. He says "You know how it was for me. And why later I wouldn't be... normal."
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2019