Bruce Bawer | Author

On sale March 14, 2023:

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Collections of my recent online work:

“Beyond his print contributions to such publications as Commentary, City Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, and our own, what Bruce Bawer writes online every year could fill a book. This year, it has, as Bruce has collected his writing into That Year: Dispatches from 2020. Published by Swamp Fox Editions, the book gathers Bruce’s observations on everything from bad awards to Britain’s NHS, The New York Times to Howard Stern. For readers who might only know Bruce through his literary essays in The New Criterion, this collection reveals his full breadth by bringing together the many reflections and aperçus of a critic writing on the front lines of an extraordinary year.” – James Panero, The New Criterion

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Swamp Fox Books, 2021

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“Bruce Bawer’s The Alhambra is a rarity: a literate yet cinematic page-turner of a thriller, with urgent contemporary relevance, grounded in the unflinching reality of fundamentalist Islam’s corrosive impact on Europe.” – Mark Tapson, Front Page Magazine

“A real page-turner….Faster-paced than a Hitchcock thriller.” – Thom Nickels, Nation State News

“Bawer rivals le Carré or Chandler in spinning a taut tale of suspense, surprise, and intrigue….The Alhambra is a first: a novel written with a full awareness of the jihadi belief system and mindset, as well as with a clear-eyed understanding of what is happening in Europe today….Bruce Bawer is to be commended for his honesty and courage in writing this superb novel….besides its pedagogic value, it’s simply a splendid story, surpassingly well told.” – Robert Spencer, PJ Media

“Not just in his brilliant non-fiction, but equally now as a suspense novelist, Bruce Bawer is among the most important contemporary analysts of the present danger of radical Islam.” – Roger L. Simon, author of The Big Fix and other Moses Wine detective novels

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Swamp Fox Books, 2019

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Broadside Books, 2012

“Bruce Bawer’s New Book Is Terrific.” – George Leef, National Review

“An outstanding work.” – Claire Berlinsky, City Journal

“The richness of The Victims’ Revolution lies in Bawer’s crystalline details and lucid exposition.” – Peter Wood, Minding the Campus

“An informative, credible and even shocking book…Reading it — and when you stop laughing — weep.” – Barbara Kay, National Post (Canada)

“Should be required reading for every humanities student at a North American university.” – Janice Fiamengo, Front Page Magazine

“This is simply the best book yet written on how the corruption of identity politics insinuated itself into—and then began to reinvent—American academia. It shows how classic liberalism’s great aspiration—the free individual free to choose—was betrayed over and over again for the fruitless and fleeting leverage of group identity. Bawer’s interviews with the smooth practitioners of group politics—salesmen who’ve sold themselves first—are stunning for their pathos. If this book was required reading at every freshman orientation in the country, it would start a revolution. It tells a story that Americans must hear.” – Shelby Steele, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University

“Bawer scores entertaining points against the insufferable posturing and unreadable prose that pervades identity studies–a lively, cantankerous take-down of a juicy target.” – Publishers Weekly

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Doubleday, 2009; Anchor paperback, 2010

“Bawer is unquestionably correct, and that fact is quite simply terrifying.” – Stephen Pollard, New York Times Book Review

“Sublimely literate and rational…an immensely important and urgent book.” – Booklist (boxed, starred review)

“An alarming, depressing, brilliant and remarkably courageous book.” – Martin Sieff, Washington Times

“Bruce Bawer has yet again written an excellent book….I truly hope that it will serve as an eye-opener for everyone.” – Geert Wilders

“Written with an urgency and clarity that makes it hard to stop reading and re-reading it. It should be studied by all who wish to understand the forces at work in the West that make an Islamic ‘House of Peace’ a brewing nightmare.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“With courage and verve, Bruce Bawer builds the case for how ‘the West is on the road to sharia’….Bawer rousingly and rightly argues that the West’s unwavering principle must be ‘a refusal to sacrifice or compromise liberty – no matter what.” – Daniel Pipes, Director, Middle East Forum

“Liberals should be in the forefront of the defense of free expression against the deeply disturbing threats Bruce Bawer documents.” – Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars

“…the most controversial gay author in modern history.” – Lynne Cohen, Jewish Tribune

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A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist

Doubleday, 2006; Broadway Books paperback, 2007

“A book of the utmost importance, full of deep concern for Europe and almost unbelievable revelations for most Americans.” – Booklist

“Europeans would do well to heed Mr. Bawer’s advice and open their eyes.” – Abraham H. Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League

“I have read no argument or book more viscerally convincing on this subject.” – Roger L. Simon, rogerlsimon.com

“A clarion call for the West to understand the radical threat to our freedoms from politicized fundamentalist Islam.” – Andrew Sullivan

“Must-read book….timely and incisive…Bawer describes a landscape of dysfunction.” – Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Indispensable.” – J. Peder Zane, Raleigh News and Observer

“Bawer makes his case moderately but eloquently and powerfully. Will Europeans heed his warning?” – Daniel Pipes

A “stunner of a book.” – Andre Zantonavitch, The American Thinker

“Some books are merely important. This one is necessary.” – Jonathan Rauch

“The sweeping and dramatic shift going on in Europe is chronicled to stunning effect….as enlightening as it is disturbing….if you want to understand the car burnings, the killings over cartoons and films, and other outrages sure to come, you won’t do any better than While Europe Slept.” – Scott C. Yates, Rocky Mountain News

“In a sane world, it would be required reading in all European and American universities.” – Robert Spencer

“Riveting, disturbing, fascinating, chilling, and shocking….required reading for anyone who wants to understand how militant Islam has insinuated itself into the heart of the West.” – Steven Emerson

“A sensitive and sober portrait of an increasingly insensitive and reckless continent.” – Victor Davis Hanson

“Blødende og intelligent indignation, fuld af skammelige og skarpe observationer.” – Klaus Wivel, Weekendavisen (Denmark)

“Deeply thoughtful, persuasive and beautifully written.” – Douglas Murray, Social Affairs Unit Web Review

Also available in Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish.

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Crown, 1997; Three Rivers paperback, 1998

“Bawer’s graceful prose and lucid insights make this a must-read book for anyone concerned with the relationship of Christianity to contemporary American culture.” – Publishers Weekly

“Groundbreaking.” – Library Journal

“Bawer lauds liberal Christianity as the essence of the Gospel, the kind of religion that Jesus would both recognize and practice because he preached it. This is a passionate, articulate, timely, and utterly useful book.” – Peter J. Gomes, Wilson Quarterly

“An adventure in American religious thought, exciting and intelligent.” – Booklist

“Stealing Jesus may prove of value simply for its clear exposition of what today’s American ‘fundamentalists’ believe and want to do. Bawer’s readers will no longer be able to greet that term with a condescending smile. The Church of Law, as he convincingly demonstrates, does not debate, and it takes no prisoners.” – Walter Kendrick, New York Times Book Review

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Simon & Schuster, 1993; paperback 1994

“Courageous and thought- provoking.” – Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, New York Times Book Review

“If there is one book about homosexuality and gay rights that everyone should read, it is probably this one.” – John Fink, Chicago Tribune

“Powerful and important…the blockbuster of the season.” – Steve Petrow, The Advocate

“Challenging and compulsively readable…tightly reasoned and responsible.” – Bob Summer, Lambda Book Report

“Courageous.” – Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

“A quiet, dispassionate voice trying to be heard above the din.” – John Heidenry, New York Daily News

“Brings cool reasoning to the heated battlefield of gay rights….Rigorous, eloquent and full of good sense…a timely arrival in a debate that needs more reason and less rancor.” – Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“One of the most sensible assessments of the gay rights movement that’s ever been written, as well as one of the most eloquent arguments for acceptance of gays that’s ever been made.” – Frank Bruni, Detroit Free Press

“Of all the sinkholes in American politics, the debate over homosexuality is the rankest….With the bracingly rational passion of a writer who can think and feel at the same time, [Bawer] charts a path out of the swamp.” – Jonathan Rauch, Wall Street Journal

“Eloquent…This could be the crossover book many have been waiting for — plain and sane talk about a complex issue…[that] should be the starting point for all future debate.” – Kirkus Reviews

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Story Line Press, 1995

“A rare pleasure: a richly detailed, erudite, and non-academic (huzza!) critique…that is positively thrilling in its unabashed love of poetry and commitment to the project of restoring some semblance of order to its chaos…..” – Booknews

“Bawer is one of the appallingly few American literary journalists whose work repays the reading; he is an intelligent, independent, tough- minded critic and a clear-eyed observer of literary affairs.” – Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

“Immensely readable…Provocative and entertaining, filled with intelligence and fight.” – Andrea Barnet, New York Times Book Review

Includes essays on Emily Dickinson, H.D., W.C. Williams, Wallace Stevens, Conrad Aiken, I.A. Richards, Louise Bogan, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, the Beats, Allen Ginsberg (discussed here), Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Helen Vendler, Dave Smith, Vikram Seth, formal poetry, literary interviews, PBS’s Voices and Visions, plus short reviews.

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Story Line Press, 1993

Named the year’s best first book of poetry by the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook.

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Free Press, 1996

“Marks the end of radical dominance in gay politics and culture, the beginning of a pragmatic and democratic approach to gay issues.” – Ray Olson, Booklist

Includes essays by Bawer, John W. Berresford, David Boaz, Stephen H. Chapman, Mel Dahl, David Link, Carolyn Lochhead, Daniel Mendelsohn, Stephen H.Miller, Jonathan Rauch, Andrew Sullivan, Paul Varnell, Norah Vincent, John Weir.

(Essays from Beyond Queer, plus other work by the same writers, can be found at the Independent Gay Forum website.)

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