Attack of the Theses

Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Protestantism by Thomas Albert Howard. Oxford University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 216 pages, $40. Even if a person somehow did not know 2017 marks the quinquennial of the Protestant Reformation, she soon...

Sharing Nixon’s Ear

Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever by Patrick J. Buchanan. Crown Forum, 2017. Hardcover, 436 pages, $30.To read Pat Buchanan’s memoir of his tour of duty during President Richard Nixon’s White House...

Bridging the Gap to Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty by Jon Kukla. Simon & Schuster, 2017. Hardcover, 592 pages, $35.Judging by the local Barnes & Noble, the success of Hamilton: An American Musical has brought about a Federalist renaissance. Two years after its debut, as...

The Happy Skeptic

Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father by Thomas S. Kidd. Yale University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 288 pages, $30.   John Adams once commented of his senior colleague, Benjamin Franklin, that “the Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The...

Transylvanian Dreams and Nightmares

Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula by Bram Stoker and Valdimar Ásmundsson, Translated by Hans Corneel de Roos. Overlook Press, 2017. Hardcover, 320 pages, $30.Dracula appeared first in a dream. In a journal entry dated March 8, 1890, Bram Stoker writes,...