"A true master of the moral imagination, Esolen breaks through the sentimental surface of nostalgia to reveal its hidden metaphysical depths in the human heart.  Homescikness is the illness of our age, and Esolen shows us the way home."                   -- Nathan Schlueter, Professor of Philosphy and Religion, Hillsdale College Alone among the creatures of the world, man suffers a pang both bitter and sweet. It is an ache for the homecoming. The Greeks called it nostalgia .  Post-modern man, homeless almost by definition, cannot understand nostalgia. If he is a progressive, dreaming of a utopia to come, he dismisses it contemptuously, eager to bury a past he despises. If he is a reactionary, he sentimentalizes it, dreaming of a lost golden age. In this profound reflection, Anthony Esolen explores the true meaning of nostalgia and its place in the human heart. Drawing on the great works of Western literature from the Odyssey to Flannery O'Connor, he traces the development of this fundamental longing from the pagan's desire for his earthly home, which most famously inspired Odysseys' heroic return to Ithaca, to its transformation under Christianity. The doctrine of the fall of man forestalls sentimental traditionalism by insisting that there has been no Eden since Eden. And the revelation of heaven as our true and final home, directing man's longing to the next world, paradoxically strengthens and ennobles the pilgrim's devotion to his home in this world. Nostalgia rightly understood is not an invitation to repeat the sins of the past or to repudiate what experience and reflection have taught us, but to hear the call of sanity and sweetness again. Perhaps we will shake our heads as if awaking from a bad and feverish dream and, coming to ourselves, resolve, like the Prodigal, to "arise and go to my father's house." "We are all wanderers looking for a cheering hearth, sailors searching for a last port. Esolen hopes to awaken us to the work of espying our true home... But we also learn that finding a true home ... is no easy matter, nor is it for the faint of heart." --Tracey Lee Simmons, The National Review   Anthony Esolen is the author of over twenty-five books and over 600 articles in both scholarly and general interest journals.  A senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, Esolen is known for his elegant essays on the faith and for his clear social commentaries.  His articles appear regularly in Touchstone, Crisis, First Things, Public Discourse, The Catholic Thing, Chronicles, and Magnificat.  An accomplished poet in his own right, Esolen is known for his widely acclaimed three-volume verse translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (Modern Library).  His Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child  has been described as "a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man .  And its sequel, Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child , has been called "essential reading for parents, educators, and anyone who is concerned to rescue children from the tedious and vacuous thing childhood has become." His recent books include O ut of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture , and its sequel, Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World .   The grandson of Italian immigrants to America, Dr. Esolen was born and raised in the coal-mining country of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, and his Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  He is a professor of humanities and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in Warner, New Hampshire.