Book Forum 

# *Summer of Our Discontent:*

### *The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse* 

Published By Knopf • 2025 

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Date and Time 

May 15, 2026 3 - 4 PM EDT 

Location 

Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 

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##### Featuring 

![Thomas Chatterton Williams-cropped](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2026-04/Thomas%20Chatterton%20Williams-cropped.jpg?itok=ZtrZ8VMX) 

Thomas Chatterton Williams 

Staff Writer, *The Atlantic*; Nonresident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

[ 

](https://x.com/thomaschattwill) 

[![ErecSmith-cropped.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2023-02/ErecSmith-cropped.jpg?itok=p8wlcACq)](/people/erec-smith) 

[Erec Smith](/people/erec-smith)

Research Fellow, Cato Institute, and Cofounder, Free Black Thought

[ 

](https://x.com/Rhetors_of_York) 

*The Summer of Our Discontent* confronts the breakdown of civility in American society. Civil discourse has given way to identitarianism, altering our media, education, policing, and the ambient language and culture we use to make sense of our lives. In his book, Thomas Chatterton Williams chronicles the transformation of social justice activism following the summer of 2020. He explores how a culture of racial identitarianism undermines individual agency and empowerment.

Join Williams for a discussion with Cato research fellow Erec Smith about the existential crisis facing American liberalism, and how we might move beyond the current impasse toward a more integrated and resilient public square.

**Reception to follow.**

![ChattertonWilliams_BookCover.jpg (](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/promo_block_book_cover_1x/public/2026-04/ChattertonWilliams_BookCover.jpg?itok=Muw4Fq-l) 

### *[Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse](https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Our-Discontent-Certainty-Discourse/dp/0593534409?tag=catoinstitute-20)*

In this provocative book, Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the most revered and reviled social commentators of our time, paints a clear and detailed picture of the ideas and events that have paved the way for the dramatic paradigm shift in social justice that has taken place over the past few years. Taking aim at the ideology of critical race theory, the rise of an oppressive social media, the fall from Obama to Trump, and the twinned crises of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, Williams documents the extent to which this transition has altered media, artistic creativity, education, employment, policing, and, most profoundly, the ambient language and culture we use to make sense of our lives.

[Purchase Book](https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Our-Discontent-Certainty-Discourse/dp/0593534409?tag=catoinstitute-20) 

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This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).