Author Series at The Mount: Peter S. Canellos, Revenge for the Sixties

Since 1993, the Summer Author Series has brought award-winning biographers to The Mount. This year’s Series explores lives and ideas that have challenged convention. From unsung heroes to innovators, these talks invite us to reflect on how acts of courage—large and small—have challenged assumptions and expanded our collective imagination.

Revenge for the Sixties is a timely and illuminating biography that traces Samuel Anthony Alito Jr.’s path from a working-class, Catholic immigrant family to the center of a decades-long conservative legal movement. Award-winning journalist Peter S. Canellos examines the personal convictions, political grievances, and institutional forces that shaped Alito’s judicial career and culminated in his authorship of Dobbs v. Jackson, the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. With clarity and depth, Canellos shows how Alito’s worldview has driven transformative rulings on religion, gun rights, affirmative action, and the limits of government power—and why understanding Alito’s story is essential to understanding the future of American law and democracy. 

The Mount wishes to thank Dan & Sherry Kasper and Richard & Carol Seltzer for supporting this program.