Trump so Far
BRUCE P. FROHNEN More than a year into his presidency, the Trump scandals continue. The “Russia conspiracy” has been shown for the fraud it always was. But one still hears about Mr. Trump’s personal vices and the crude nature of many of his public pronouncements. Some...A Little More Crafty
Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. Hardcover, 352 pages, $27. GRACY OLMSTEAD What does it mean to be a craftsman? To us, the word is often caught up in artistry: the...Waltharius and the Epic Quest for Epic Poetry
Waltharius edited and translated by Abram Ring. Peeters, 2016. Paperback, 198 pages, $63. A. M. JUSTER Western literature begins with greatness on a grand scale. Homer’s magnificent epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, created the framework and the impetus for...Political Thinking from the Hillbilly Thomist
A Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor edited by Henry T. Edmonson III. The University Press of Kentucky, 2017. Hardcover, 398 pages, $60. Reviewed by KARL C. SCHAFFENBURG This volume represents the latest addition to an ongoing series from the University Press of...To Hear a Baby Crying
Water at the Roots: Poems and Insights of a Visionary Farmer by Philip Britts. Plough Publishing House, 2018. Paperback, 179 pages, $16. JAKE MEADOR On Christmas Day 1914, roughly 100,000 British, French, and German soldiers fighting along the western front of World...A New, Old Way to Learn Latin
Learning Latin the Ancient Way: Latin Textbooks from the Ancient World by Eleanor Dickey. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Softcover, 197 pages, $30. DAVID G. BONAGURA, JR. In perhaps the wittiest satire of Latin teaching ever performed, the title character of Monty...Keeper of the Cosmopolitan Flame
The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey Stewart. Oxford University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 932 pages, $30. Gilbert NMO Morris One gets the sense, not even halfway through Jeffrey Stewart’s epochal biography of Alain Locke, that Locke touched aspects of one’s...What Popper Saw in Churchill
The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty: A View from Europe by João Carlos Espada. Routledge, 2016. Hardcover, 212 pages, $149.95. DANIEL J. MAHONEY The Portuguese political theorist João Espada has written a most thoughtful and instructive book on the political and...The Unwritten Constitution Today
Constitutional Morality and the Rise of the Quasi-Law by Bruce P. Frohnen and George W. Carey. Harvard University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 304 pages, $45. TED MCALLISTER One of the most serious questions of our time is whether the rise of the regulatory state has...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!