The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Penguin Press, 2018

Excerpt: This is a book about three Great Untruths that seem to have spread widely in recent years:
1. The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
While many propositions are untrue, in order to be classified as a Great Untruth, an idea must meet three criteria:
1. It contradicts ancient wisdom (ideas found widely in the wisdom literatures of many cultures).
2. It contradicts modern psychological research on well-being.
3. It harms the individuals and communities who embrace it.

We will show how these three Great Untruths—and the policies and political movements that draw on them—are causing problems for young people, universities, and, more generally, liberal democracies. To name just of few of these problems: Teen anxiety, depression, and suicide rates have risen sharply in the last few years. The culture on many college campuses has become more ideologically uniform, compromising the ability of scholars to seek truth, and of students to learn from a broad range of thinkers.

Praise: “A disturbing and comprehensive analysis of recent campus trends … . Lukianoff and Haidt notice something unprecedented and frightening … . The consequences of a generation unable or disinclined to engage with ideas that make them uncomfortable are dire for society and open the door—accessible from both the left and the right—to various forms of authoritarianism.”
— Thomas Chatterton Williams, The New York Times Book Review

“So how do you create ‘wiser kids’? Get them off their screens. Argue with them. Get them out of their narrow worlds of family, school, and university. Boot them out for a challenging Gap year. It all makes perfect sense … the cure seems a glorious revelation.”
—Philip Delves Broughton, Evening Standard

“The authors, both of whom are liberal academics—almost a tautology on today’s campuses—do a great job of showing how ‘safetyism’ is cramping young minds. Students are treated like candles, which can be extinguished by a puff of wind. The goal of a Socratic education should be to turn them into fires, which thrive on the wind. Instead, they are sheltered from anything that could cause offence . . . . Their advice is sound. Their book is excellent. Liberal parents, in particular, should read it.”
—Edward Luce, Financial Times
Coddling is a New York Times bestseller as a hardcover and audiobook.