Something Wicked This Way Comes
Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa By Anthony Grafton. Belknap Press, 2023. Hardcover, 304 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. “Dame Frances Yates” is a name that usually does not cross the lips of the educated public. However, in the field of...
Early Modern Queens
Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power By Leah Redmond Chang. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2023. Hardcover, 512 pages, $35.00. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. In the Anglophone world, there is one (and only one) Renaissance queen: Elizabeth Tudor....
Sailing East
Adventurers: The Improbable Rise of the East India Company, 1550-1650 By David Howarth. Yale University Press, 2023. Hardcover, 480 pages, $35.00. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. One of the most popular phrases among Marxists during the long reign of Barack H. Obama was...
Virtue in the Age of Neo-Machiavellianism
Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena By James Hankins. Harvard University Press, 2023. Hardcover, 448 pages, $55. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. We live in a Neo-Machiavellian age. Gone are the “End of History”...
"In an age when so many of our inherited institutions seem to be unraveling under the pressures of a restless, self-regarding individualism, it is a rare and welcome thing to encounter a book that speaks with quiet conviction about the things that have long sustained the American
"If classical teachers believe that truth, beauty, and goodness can indeed change the world, then the sort of student (and teacher and school) described by @AnthonyEsolen is a net gain for this world. And his Classical Catechism serves as a helpful tool in building the necessary