To Awaken the Uneasy Sleeper: New Vistas on Russell Kirk’s Fiction
The Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination By Camilo Peralta. Vernon Press, 2024. Hardcover, 222 pages, $78.00. Reviewed by James E. Person Jr. The late Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was one of the wisest yet humblest of men one could...
“To Help Man Endure by Lifting His Heart”: Earl Hamner at 100
By James E. Person Jr. “My grandfather used to say that nobody owns a mountain, but getting born and living and dying in its shadow, we loved Waltons’ Mountain and felt it was ours.” Spoken in the gentle, Southern/Scotch-Irish accent typical of rural Virginia, those...
Unlikely Centers of Cultural Change
Coffeehouse Culture in the Atlantic World, 1650-1789 by E. Wesley Reynolds III. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Cloth, 264 pages, $115.00. Reviewed by James E. Person Jr. Near the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson famously referred to coffee as “the favorite drink of the...
Bradbury in the Afternoon
Bradbury Beyond Apollo by Jonathan R. Eller. University of Illinois Press, 2020. Hardcover, 336 pages. $35. Reviewed by James E. Person Jr. Anyone who considers the life and career of Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) is eventually struck by a remarkable fact: although the...
Very grateful to have been awarded one of this year's Richard D. McLellan Prizes. The @KirkCenter's support for my historical work on First Amendment litigation, as well the scholarship of the other honorees, including Eugene Volokh (@HooverInst), is invaluable.
Don't miss meeting and hearing from our new Free Speech Fellows in person! Along with special guests on November 19 at the National Press Club.