In Praise of Poetry and Form
The Great Game: Essays on Poetics By Amit Majmudar. Acre Books, 2024. Paperback, 288 pages, $18. Reviewed by Steven Knepper. Literature, Amit Majmudar warns, must never plod: “Plodding prose, plodding thought, rhythmless lifeless stuff you can’t step to: that’s...
Monster is the Machine
The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origin of Bovadium By J. R. R. Tolkien. William Morrow, 2025. Hardcover, 144 pages, $26.99. Reviewed by Ben Reinhard. When Russell Kirk decried the automobile as “a mechanical Jacobin”—a revolutionary naturally destructive of...
After the New Left: Rereading Breaking Ranks
By John C. “Chuck” Chalberg. The recent death of Norman Podhoretz prompted me to return to his “political memoir,” Breaking Ranks. Published in 1979, it deserves to be read or re-read today—and not simply as a historical account of his evolution from left to right...
Amici
Michelangelo and Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius By William E. Wallace. Princeton University Press, 2026. Hardcover, 248 pages, $35.00. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. There is a running joke that Americans remain perpetually torn between Puritanism and pornography....
Here's @ubookman editor @lsheahan on academic freedom.
“If the university no longer seeks the production and dissemination of knowledge, it loses the primary justification for its academic freedom.”
More from @lsheahan here: https://civitasoutlook.pulse.ly/nezohkn6cc
"The first question, and perhaps the most pressing one when reviewing a book by @McCormickProf, is this: Even in the comparatively small world of intellectual conservatism, is there anything George isn’t doing?" - R. McKay Stangler in @ubookman