“Gray is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center”
I am very pleased to announce that my newest book, Gray Is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center, has been published today, see here. While it is always gratifying to complete a major project, I must admit that this one is especially exciting. As I explain in the introduction, in some ways, I have been working on this book for over twenty-five years, after hearing a spectacular lecture by Adam Michnik in 1996. I wrote dozens of short pieces on Deliberately Considered, Public Seminar, and this platform, informed by the insights of that lecture. And now the book: a long-term project, finally completed, is gratifying.
But it is more than that. This book is different. What began as a more or less academic project, analyzing why I think it is important to find relatively sound solutions to pressing controversial problems, to ensure that the best doesn’t become the enemy of the good, turned into a sustained examination of my primary commitment to a free public life that includes those across the political spectrum, what I see as a commitment to a radical center.
I completed the book with a sense of urgency that I didn’t feel when I started the project. Given the global ascendence of authoritarianism: what I thought of as a neat argument that should be considered along with others, became a plea to directly oppose the darkness of our times. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism tells the long story of the diminishment of the public as one of the key elements of modern barbarism, I see my book as a call to prioritize Arendt’s project of turning back the eclipse of free public life.
I seek to show how the commitment to a gray political aesthetic, coupled with a primary radical commitment to a principled democratic public life that includes people from across the political spectrum, is necessary to decisively turn back the retreat of democracy, both systemically and in specific places and times.
The chapters of the book are based on lectures I have given over the years. They were my response to queries from colleagues, some associated with the Democracy Seminar, all of whom share the Seminar’s normative concerns. I gave lectures that responded to their invitations in specific contexts; the chapters based on the lectures apply my responses to the major themes of this book, compactly specified in the title.
Key critical insights in the book include:
The positive dimension of uncertainty
The intellectual imperative to go beyond ‘speaking truth to power’
The radical potential of art and everyday democratic practices
The two sides of collaboration
The pernicious interaction between cynicism and dogmatic true belief
Strategies for revitalizing democratic imagination and institutions
Along the way, I present provocative interpretations going beyond cliched thought and action, concerning:
The war in Gaza
The problems of DEI and antisemitism, and anti-DEI and anti-antisemitism
The new authoritarian threat as neo-totalitarianism
I am writing this piece to let my friends and colleagues know that the book is out. I want to share my excitement with you, but also I am hoping that you can help me make my argument more visible. The decision to publish the book with the Central European University Press was a matter of commitment to that storied institution. But because of changes at the press and its location, I worry that the book may not be as visible as would be ideal. To compensate for that, I am working with my editor and some other colleagues at the press, hoping to reach potential readers in the academy and beyond. I look forward to giving interviews, joining podcasts, writing short articles drawn from the book, giving lectures, and taking part in university and community events, to get the word out. Your help would be appreciated. You can best contact me at my New School email, goldfarj@newschool.edu or through CEU Press:
For Review Copies, please contact: Yulia Laktionova, y.laktionova@aup.nl
For Interviews and Media Inquiries please contact: Jen McCall, McCallJ@press.ceu.edu
Title: Gray Is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center
Author: Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
Publisher: Central European University Press, an imprint of Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9789633868614
Format: Paperback
Publication: 19 January 2026
Page extent: 250pp
Price: €20.95/ £19.95/ $24.99
URL: https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789633868614/gray-is-beautiful
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb is the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology Emeritus at The New School for Social Research and chair of the Democracy Seminar.