by Luke Nicastro | Apr 18, 2021
The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria by Owen White. Harvard University Press, 2021. Hardcover, 336 pages, $39.39. Reviewed by Luke Nicastro Nearly sixty years after the demise of French Algeria, both colonizer and colonized continue to...
by Clayton Trutor | Apr 18, 2021
Craft: An American History. by Glenn Adamson. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. Hardcover, 400 pages. $22.50. Reviewed by Clayton Trutor Glenn Adamson’s new book has completely blown my mind. Like so many great works of history, Craft: An American History takes a seemingly...
by Eugene Schlanger | Apr 11, 2021
The Dolphin (Two Versions, 1972–1973) by Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019, Paperback, ix + 195 pages, $18. The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar,...
by Carl Rollyson | Apr 11, 2021
Sergeant Salinger: A Novel by Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary Press, 2021. Hardcover, 288 pages, $28.50. Reviewed by Carl E. Rollyson Biographical novels trouble certain readers. What is true? What is made up? Why isn’t biography enough? Why not just read Salinger,...
by Albert Wald | Apr 4, 2021
Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life by Alex Christofi. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021. Hardcover, 236 pages. $35. Reviewed by Albert Wald In an article on André Gide’s Memories of the Assize Court in the May 2020 issue of The New Criterion, former prison doctor Anthony...
by Daniel Buck | Apr 4, 2021
On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Booksby Karen Swallow Prior. Brazos Press, 2018.Hardcover, 272 pages, $20. Reviewed by Daniel Buck Society needs literary critics. Time being a scarce resource, they help us to sift between the gold and the dross,...
by Francis P. Sempa | Mar 28, 2021
By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987), who became a leading anti-communist and prominent intellectual figure in American conservatism, began his professional intellectual career as a Marxist. His early writings appeared in leading Marxist and socialist...
by Luma Simms | Mar 28, 2021
A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics by Matthew W. Slaboch. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Hardcover, 208 pages, $47.50. Reviewed by Luma Simms My parents marveled at the freeways when we first came to America. As they learned to drive the...
by Jack Beyrer | Mar 23, 2021
First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power By Walter Zimmerman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Hardcover, 562 pages, $15. Reviewed by Jack Beyrer Teddy Roosevelt was a man so vast he contained multitudes. For progressives, the...
by Anthony Hennen | Mar 21, 2021
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge: The Authorized, Expanded, and Annotated Edition By Calvin Coolidge, edited by Amity Shlaes and Matthew Denhart. ISI Books, 2021. Paperback, 239 pages, $22. Reviewed by Anthony Hennen Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt have seen...
