The Two Hoovers

by | Jul 10, 2017

Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency by Charles Rappleye. Simon and Schuster, 2016. Hardcover, 551 pages, $32.50. The title and subtitle of this book do—and do not—accurately advertise what it contains. Something a good deal less than a full...

Against the Tyranny of Feelings

by | Mar 26, 2017

The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism edited by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow. Templeton Press, 2015. Hardcover, 280 pages, $28.Nearly three decades after Allan Bloom pronounced the “Closing of the American Mind,” Mark...

A Madisonian Lament

by | Aug 8, 2016

A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption by Jay Cost. Encounter Books, 2015. Hardcover, 393 pages, $28.This Madisonian lament might have been written as early as the 1790s and the battle over the constitutionality of the First...

Progressives and the Booboisie

by | Jul 27, 2014

The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class by Fred Siegel. Encounter Books, 2014. Hardcover, 240 pages, $24.What do H. L. Mencken and Barack Obama have in common? Not much, it would seem. The sage of Baltimore was skeptical of all...

Bully in the Bully Pulpit

by | May 5, 2014

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Simon & Schuster, 2013. Hardcover,928 pages, $40.Has this country had a providential history? Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin must be tempted to...