Lessons of Nationalism
Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire By Katja Hoyer. Pegasus Books, 2021. Hardcover, 272 pages, $27.95. Reviewed by Casey Chalk Today the word nationalism provokes immediate fears of a resurgent “blood and soil” fascism. Nationalism stokes “racist or...
Appropriating the Goods of Reactionary Conservatism
The Reactionary Mind: Why “Conservative” Isn’t Enough by Michael Warren Davis. Regnery, 2021. Hardcover, 256 pages, $28.99. Reviewed by Casey Chalk There’s a common interaction my wife and I have with people when we are out with our four young children. The stranger...
Democracy and Iniquity
We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy by Robert Tracy McKenzie. IVP Academic, 2021. Hardcover, 304 pages, $28. Reviewed by Casey Chalk As U.S. troops continued their exit from Afghanistan this summer, a former high-school history...
The Sinai Revolution and American Ordered Liberty
The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom By Os Guinness. InterVarsity Press, 2021. Hardcover, 288 pages, $25. Reviewed by Casey Chalk Conservatives are by default skeptical of revolutions. British statesman Edmund Burke in his...
How to Read the News and Stay Happy
Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News by Jeffrey Bilbro. InterVarsity Press, 2021. Hardcover, 200 pages, $24. Reviewed by Casey Chalk “We’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning,” proclaimed then-presidential candidate...
Naive Virtue?
First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks. Harper, 2020. Hardcover, 416 pages, $30. Reviewed by Casey Chalk A classic, said Mark Twain, is “a book which people praise but don’t...
Feudalism Without a Soul
The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin. Encounter Books, 2020. Hardcover, 288 pages, $29. Reviewed by Casey Chalk Perhaps one of the great cons of the twenty-first century has been corporate America’s success in deceiving...
More than Regime Change, We Need a New Cosmological Vision