Enchanting Criticism: Dana Gioia as Literary Critic
Poetry as Enchantment: And Other Essays By Dana Gioia. Paul Dry Books, 2024. Paperback, 272 pages, $21.95. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey. In his essay titled “Reading,” W. H. Auden sets forth what he views as the special duties of the literary critic: What is the function...
The Machine or the Garden?
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity By Paul Kingsnorth. Thesis/Penguin Random House, 2025. Hardcover, 368 pages, $32. Reviewed by Paul Krause. In the beginning was the garden. That is a very standard myth to start. Many cultures have foundation myths that...
What Plato Meant
Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political By Melissa Lane. Princeton University Press, 2023. Hardcover, 480 pages, $49.95. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. In October of 1993, a trial took place in Colorado regarding Colorado Amendment 2, a ballot measure that...
After the Republic: Tacitus on the End of a Free State
By Coyle Neal. Since the beginning, we Americans have been concerned about the end of our republican freedoms at the hands of a tyrant. Whether colonists decrying George III, anti-Federalists staring suspiciously at the Constitution, or Whigs wringing their hands over...
For America250, @lsheahan enters the fray:
What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom
A "revolution not made, but prevented.” Russell Kirk fondly and frequently quoted E. J. Payne’s pithy summary of Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution.
"So yes, Lord Alfred, perhaps you are right after all. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world! Perhaps one last Ulyssean adventure remains beyond the sunset, and perhaps some work of noble note may yet be done."