American Imperialism and Its Discontents

The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire by Stephen Kinzer. Henry Holt, 2017. Hardcover, 306 pages, $28. As the subtitle suggests, this is a book about personality and politics, a group biography with a large cast, including...

A Fine Closet of Curiosities

In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century’s Most Inquiring Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Norton, 2015. Hardcover, 352 pages, $27.Reading Sir Thomas Browne’s unique prose reminds me of walking through the Pitt Rivers Museum in...

Doing Justice to Complexity

Coleridge and the Conservative Imagination by Alan P. R. Gregory. Mercer University Press, 2003. Hardcover, 300 pages, $35.50. “From a popular philosophy and a philosophic populace, Good Sense deliver us!” So Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes in his Lay Sermons, which...

Ringing the Alarm for Hope

Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World by Charles J. Chaput. Henry Holt and Company, 2017. Hardcover, 288 pages, $26.“If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.” So goes a popular bumper sticker displayed by...