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Book cover for "Old Enemies" by Lee Oser

Old Enemies

By Lee Oser

In an America running on algorithms, outrage, and half-truths, ex-journalist Moses Shea is down on his luck. Blacklisted in New York, dumped by the only woman he ever loved, he has one skill that might save him-he's a wizard at languages. His last chance comes through his old Harvard pal Nick Carty, whose business empire could use a man of Moses' talents. But when his new job lands him on the campus of a defunct Catholic college, the disgraced newspaperman gets pulled back into the news.

Lee Oser's Old Enemies is a joy to read, clever and astute, sharp and funny, satiric but humane. We have the issues of our time in dramatic light--identity politics, campus politics, cancel culture, start-ups and political protests, 21st-century surveillance (hacking), bias in the media and civilizational collapse in the streets--and we have a cast of representative characters in all-too-plausible action: digital moguls and their flunkies, Millennial hotshots, reporters on the make, academics in retreat, young anarchists and middle-aged feminists. Through them all courses our narrator, an advertising whiz who is brilliant with languages, a reader of the classics, not very attractive or heroic, but with a moral center that brings the sad and galling truths of life in the 2020s to piercing light.  His verbal jousting with the personalities around him are gems of wit worthy of a Restoration comedy.  Read this book and you will think deeply--and also laugh out loud.

Mark Bauerlein, Senior Editor, First Things

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