What Popper Saw in Churchill

The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty: A View from Europe by João Carlos Espada. Routledge, 2016. Hardcover, 212 pages, $149.95. DANIEL J. MAHONEY The Portuguese political theorist João Espada has written a most thoughtful and instructive book on the political and...

The Unwritten Constitution Today

Constitutional Morality and the Rise of the Quasi-Law by Bruce P. Frohnen and George W. Carey. Harvard University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 304 pages, $45. TED MCALLISTER One of the most serious questions of our time is whether the rise of the regulatory state has...
A Quiet American in Vietnam

A Quiet American in Vietnam

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot. Liveright Publishing, 2018. Hardcover, 715 pages, $35. JOHN C. CHALBERG In this massive biography of Colonel Edward Lansdale, biographer Max Boot has given us the story of a quiet...
Tomboys and Magic

Tomboys and Magic

The creepy-cozy tales of John Bellairs. Eve Tushnet Children fell in love with the tales of John Bellairs (1938–1991) because they perfectly combined creepy and cozy: the laughing skeleton, curled up by the fire with a mug of cider. In novels like The Curse of the...

Patiently Learning to Belong

Port William Novels & Stories: The Civil War to World War II by Wendell Berry. Library of America, 2018. Hardcover, 1018 pages, $40. This January, the Library of America released its first volume of Wendell Berry’s writings, Port William Novels & Stories (The...