Centrists of the World Unite!

Ambitious ... Wooldridge [is] the Bagehot of our day. His narrative is persuasive, his diagnosis of the malaise of the Western elites is fresh and he offers convincing reasons for believing that "the lost genius of liberalism" will make a comeback. ... [He] wants to rid liberals of their taste for extremism, to persuade them to take populism seriously and take the fight to the autocrats. He denies that liberalism is shallow or banal, as its critics from Carlyle to Houellebecq have scoffed. He has done an outstanding job of making a fresh, compelling case for liberalism

Daniel Johnson, Critic

Wooldridge ... is what you might call a muscular Whig, someone who believes in the idea of progress and liberal democracy as our best shot at human flourishing

Josh Glancy, Sunday Times

In Centrists of the World Unite, Adrian Wooldridge carefully locates a crisis both within and without liberalism. [His] approach is refreshing ... [the book is] entertaining, eerie, and [provides] a piercing look at where societies and economies find themselves — which is, ultimately, quite a mess. There is no doubt that liberalism has found itself at a crossroads ... this [book] enables us to think about how it can recover

Samuel Mace, Critic

For a one-volume history of a rich and complicated subject, you can’t do better

Jonathan Rauch, Unpopulist

Powerful and persuasive ... [Wooldridge has] a vivid way of telling the story of an idea through attacks from outside and betrayals from within .... neatly leads to an account of liberalism’s current retreat and what needs to be done now to revive it

David Willetts, Financial Times

A fine book ... stretches an essential truth over an impressive intellectual range

Philip Collins, Observer

One of the most vividly thoughtful liberals of our time

Michael Morris, BusinessDay

Mr. Wooldridge gives us a bravura performance of summary and synthesis in his telling of the history and substance of liberalism

Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal

Enthralling ... Wooldridge writes fascinatingly about how liberalism’s founders fought to remove "barriers to dynamism", how their successors grappled with the meaning of freedom and how fiercely liberals themselves have criticised their own creed ... The book's focus is how to chart a course for renewal ... it is a bracing manifesto

Economist

All eras of economic turmoil have their ground-breaking and pioneering books, lifting the curtain on what is really happening. I would put Wooldridge’s volume right into that class for our time

David Howell, Article