Mary Eberstadt’s new book, featuring a foreword by the late Cardinal George Pell, addresses the revolution’s compounding effects on society, politics, and Christianity itself

SAN FRANCISCO — The sexual revolution, accelerated by widespread adoption of the control pill in the 1960s, has had transformative effects on individuals and families, as Mary Eberstadt masterfully addressed in ADAM AND EVE AND AFTER THE PILL (Ignatius Press, 2012). While familial destruction, rage-filled protests and confusion over sexual identity continue to tear at the fabric of the West, Eberstadt now trains her empirical and logical prowess on the widest targets possible. In her second, follow-on book, ADAM AND EVE AFTER THE PILL, REVISITED (Ignatius Press, 2023), she examines in detail the revolution’s radical undermining of the three institutional pillars of Western life: society, politics and churches themselves.  

In perhaps the last work to be published by the late Cardinal George Pell, his foreword to ADAM AND EVE AFTER THE PILL, REVISITED applauds Eberstadt’s “substantial empirical evidence for her central claim: the individual atomization and familial collapse brought on by the revolution have gone on to transform society and politics. They have also wounded the churches from within, at times mortally.”  

ADAM AND EVE AFTER THE PILL, REVISITED deploys a broad range of statistical and other evidence from entirely secular sources. Throughout, the numbers don’t lie: the sexual revolution that has proved disastrous on the microcosmic plane is now proving equally destructive to social organizations, including Christian religious organizations. This book connects as no other facts and figures from across the social sciences to today’s increasingly inescapable woes of divisive politics, social dysfunction, and emptying churches consumed by enduring religious civil war. Eberstadt also tackles the manifold meanings of the most promising piece of potential rollback since the revolution’s inception: the Dobbs decision and its aftermath.

Eberstadt holds the Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute. She is an essayist, novelist and author of several influential books, including How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization; Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution; and the novel The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism.

“A brilliant and courageous book.” — George Weigel, author of The Fragility of Order and The Next Pope

“Essential reading…Mary Eberstadt is our most astute commentator on the vast human costs of the sexual revolution.” — R.R. Reno, editor of First Things 

“[Eberstadt has] the acuity of a surgeon, the dexterity of an artist, and the wisdom of a sage.” — Erika Bachiochi, author of The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

For more information, to request a media review copy, or to schedule an interview with Mary Eberstadt, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or [email protected]) of Carmel Communications. 

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