Social and political polarization has become so extreme that conversation about the simplest of issues is today often close to impossible. In Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord, one of today’s most innovative social thinkers observes how polarized thinking—from both the Right and the Left—is not just putting civil conversation in jeopardy, it is getting in the way of addressing our times’ most essential questions.

In this short book, Charles Johnston examines why we see what we do and what the greater maturity of understanding needed to get beyond warring ideological purities requires of us. And he addresses what such understanding looks like when applied to critical concerns where divisiveness too often prevails: war and peace, climate change, health care, immigration, abortion, bigotry, the relationship of science and faith, and conflicting views on the nature of progress.