The One and the Ninety-Nine

Announcing a new book—out June 16, 2026

Cover illustration credit one again goes to my friend Liana Finck, an artist who will be well known to readers of the New Yorker.

It’s not hard to find your tribe. The real challenge today is not losing yourself within one.

For the past three years, I’ve been researching and writing the most important and personal thing that I have ever published: THE ONE AND THE NINETY-NINE: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion, out from St. Martin’s Press on June 16, 2026.

For those who know me or have followed my work, please consider stopping now to click this link and pre-order. For the rest: let me tell you why I believe this book is worth the investment—and why I think it will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Some Backstory

In 2021, when my mother unexpectedly died, I became the primary caregiver for my father, who was battling advanced Alzheimer’s disease—only a few months after my book Wanting was published, and just weeks after I was newly married. That experience forced both me and my father to confront serious existential questions: our relationship to one another, to our families, to our friends, to group affiliations of every kind, and in turn our very identities. And I was forced to face questions about relationships which I had never seriously confronted before:

Why have I never felt at home in crowds? What important rites of passage did I miss in my life? (And did I have the courage to complete the one I was clearly in the middle of?) Which movements or affiliations had I been co-opted into without full awareness, knowledge, or consent? What does “resistance” really mean, and how and when do we know what to resist and what to accept? How could I be sure that my thoughts and desires were even my own? What effect is technology having on the way I relate to other people—and on the structure of my soul?

Ultimately, I realized that my journey—and the questions I was asking—is universal.

Those questions have become even more urgent in an age of thin desires and crumbling institutions, artificial intelligence, and powerful forces of social contagion amplified by technology. What does it mean to forge a solid self, a differentiated identity, and still have deep relationships with others when the world seems to be conspiring to make us retreat into bastions of safety under the guise of loyalty, or “finding your tribe,” or “finding yourself”—all detached from the freedom and responsibility that are the very foundation of love?

I’m convinced that beneath the economic and policy debates, beneath the political battles, beneath the fertility crisis, beneath the smartphone arguments, and beneath the endless online discourse, something fundamental has broken in the relationship between individuals and groups. It has become extraordinarily difficult to belong to groups without either becoming alienated or joining something that demands cult-like loyalty and eventually costs you your integrity—and yourself.

I’ve seen countless friends, families, and relationships fall apart because of a lost ability to relate to others when anxiety is high, when insecurity is present, and when mimesis and social contagion take over—often in the form of coercion and conformity.

The solution is not fundamentally technological, economic, or political. It is profoundly human.

Ways of Relating

Until we come to grips with the ways our society incentivizes and often produces pseudo-selves—people who lack a solid sense of self, who negotiate their identities in real time based on whatever is most expedient—and with the likelihood that we ourselves operate this way more often than we would like to admit, we will continue to experience greater volatility, polarization, and hollowed-out conversations and relationships.

There is a perennial path for entering into group dynamics in a way that leads to growth rather than hijacking. It is possible to use social technology—and an increasing share of tech is social tech—in ways that lead to depth, not shallowness. There is a way to recover strong rites of passage in our own lives, and for our families and children, that can lead to purpose and meaning rather than trapping us on the infernal hamster wheel of keeping up with whatever other people say is important at any given moment.

Many of us come back to the well daily, carrying our buckets, looking for other people who might help fill them with whatever form of water we think we need. What we seek is the kind of water that creates a well springing up within us. When we find it, we leave behind the cycle of addiction, the cycle of endless validation, and the search for being known and liked. We embrace a new path which, at times, will require us to feel unknown, unvalidated, and even unloved. We do the unrepeatable thing that only we are called to do on this earth. We speak what is real. We stop operating from fear.

Not All Who Wander…

It was with much of this in mind that I reread the parable of the lost sheep—perhaps for the 1,000th time—sometime in late 2021. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s simple: a single sheep leaves the flock of the ninety-nine and becomes “lost,” wandering until the Good Shepherd finds it and brings it back into the fold.

I have always been unsatisfied with the interpretation of this sheep as simply the lone sinner brought back into communion. After all, we all identify with the lost sheep when we read the story. So if that is all of us, how can we all be lost, all astray, while there remains the image of a perfect ninety-nine that has not?

Today, we face competing narratives about “the one.” I think many of those narratives are summed up in the Gospel of Thomas where—true to the gnostic mind—the lost sheep is actually the most intelligent sheep (“he has a 150 IQ!”—you can already picture it on Twitter), tracked down by Jesus and praised for being unlike the other dumb, herd-like sheep. Perhaps it is the neurodivergent tech founder who will save us all.

But this reading is thin, too. We are meant to be in communion with others, so what good is differentiation for differentiation’s sake?

This is the question at the heart of The One and the Ninety-Nine, which is an exploration into the heart of our culture—and into the heart of each one of us. I share details from my own journey that are intimate enough that, at times, I wondered what I was doing as I sat writing this book in my office after rocking my newborn daughter to sleep.

I did it because I had to.

We are in a moment of profound existential crisis, and it is going to take courage to find our way out—and to each other.

—Luke

P.S. If you’re interested in buying 100 or more copies, please use this form to submit a short application (1 min or less) our new crowdsources platform. In short: if you buy 100 copies for a group event, or can help 100 other individuals buy copies, you will receive a 25% discount off retail, signed books, and a virtual appearance by me to your group. The link to the crowdsourcing platform will be available next week for those who think they can move 100 books by June 1st.

Pre-order THE ONE AND THE NINETY-NINE now. Thank you.