He Knew the Reason We Fight
Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia L. Haven. Michigan State University Press, 2018. Paperback, 346 pages, $30. Reviewed by Patrick Kurp In their 1941 short feature In the Sweet Pie and Pie, Larry, Curly, and Moe are ex-cons hoping to marry three...
This Is Not How We Got Here
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder. Tim Duggan Books, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $27. Reviewed by Sumantra Maitra How did we end up here? Yale scholar and historian, Professor Timothy Snyder’s latest book attempts to explore the issues...
The Neighborliness Not Taken
Won’t You Be My Neighbor directed by Morgan Neville. Tremolo Productions, 2018. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes. By Ryan Shinkel The neighborhood could have never been that friendly. There must have been scars or tattoos underneath all his sweaters, my fellow...
Pharisees and Neocolonialists
Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century by Obianuju Ekeocha. Ignatius Press, 2018. Paperback, 225 pages, $17. Reviewed by Casey Chalk In one of the final scenes of the 2006 film Last King of Scotland, infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin...
The Artist and His Epoch
David Jones on Religion, Politics, and Culture: Unpublished Prose ed. Thomas Berenato, Anne Price-Owen, and Kathleen Henderson Staudt. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Cloth, xviii + 347 pages, $176. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz David Jones (1895–1974) is acknowledged...
Repulsed by the Education Cartel
The Coming Death and Future Resurrection of American Higher Education by Richard J. Bishirjian. St. Augustine’s Press, 2017. Hardcover, 121 pages, $22. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner The Coming Death and Future Resurrection of American Higher Education is the story of...
Why Movies are Prayers
Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen. IVP Books, 2017. Paperback, 208 pages, $16. Reviewed by Mark Judge Film critic Josh Larsen has written a beautiful and grace-filled book. Movies Are Prayers got strong reviews in the Christian...
When Burke Became Burke
Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830–1914: An Intellectual History by Emily Jones. Oxford, 2017. Hardcover, 288 pages, $88. Reviewed by William F. Byrne Two myths, or, at least, oversimplifications, have long surrounded Edmund Burke’s iconic...
Tipping the State’s Sacred Cows
The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor by Patrick M. Garry. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2017. Paperback, 112 pages, $10. Reviewed by Jacob Bruggeman Published in 2017 by University of South Dakota professor Patrick...
For America250, @lsheahan enters the fray:
What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom
A "revolution not made, but prevented.” Russell Kirk fondly and frequently quoted E. J. Payne’s pithy summary of Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution.
"So yes, Lord Alfred, perhaps you are right after all. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world! Perhaps one last Ulyssean adventure remains beyond the sunset, and perhaps some work of noble note may yet be done."