A Brief History of the Cold War by Lee Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards Spalding. The Heritage Foundation, 2014. Paperback, 108 pages, $7. For a conflict that supposedly ended a quarter of a century ago, the Cold War certainly made its share of news in 2014. Important...
We are pleased to announce the release of The University Bookman on Edmund Burke, now available for Kindle. Collecting 21 reviews, essays, and interviews from the Bookman on the life and thought of Edmund Burke, this book is only $2.99, and purchases support our...
Lessons from Mary Ward and the Women’s Anti-Suffragist Movement Helen Andrews When the fight in Britain over women’s suffrage came to an end with the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which enfranchised property-holding women over thirty, Mary...
David Jones in the Great War by Thomas Dilworth. Enitharmon Press (London), 2012. Cloth, 228 pp., £15.Nearly four decades after he left the trenches, the Anglo-Welsh poet-painter David Jones (1895–1974) declared that “the forward area of the West Front had a permanent...
On Saturday, 26 May 1759, Samuel Johnson wrote an untitled essay in The Idler. It begins: “Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought.” This reminded me of hearing a joke for the second time, one told by someone else, but one you knew by heart. It is true that...
The Republic of Virtue by Paul Lake. University of Evansville Press, 2013. Hardcover, 80 pages, $15. The title poem of Paul Lake’s The Republic of Virtue begins like Genesis. “In Year One,” he writes, “the month of Vintage, time began.” Instead of the Spirit of God...
Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing by Arthur M. Melzer. University of Chicago Press, 2014. Hardcover, 464 pages, $45.It sounded like jabberwocky to some, but then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s distinction between “known...
Selected Writings of Thomas Paine Edited by Ian Shapiro and Jane E. Calvert. Yale University Press, 2014. Paperback, 676 pages, $18. In his lively introduction to this new edition of Paine’s legendary writings, Yale political scientist Ian Shapiro calls Thomas Paine...
The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think, by Julian Baggini. Granta Books, 2014. Paper, 280 pages, $14. There are few areas of life as difficult to navigate or moderate as eating. It’s necessary for existence—one of the most primal acts in which we partake. And...
God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion by David O’Connell. Transaction, 2014. Hardcover, 452 pp., $54.95.David O’Connell’s God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion is a thoughtful, engaging, but ultimately unconvincing examination...
To Find Eyes to See
@NadyaWilliams81 on "More Than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature" by Joshua Hren. @WordOnFire Luminor
Rural America as It Really Is
Jason C. Phillips on "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" by Joanna Dee Das. @UChicagoPress
