Mark Twain Revisited

Mark Twain Revisited

Mark Twain  By Ron Chernow. Penguin Press, 2025.  Hardcover, 1,200 pages, $45. Reviewed by Chuck Chalberg. Let us stipulate at the outset that Ron Chernow has indeed covered the Twain waterfront in this massive volume. How could he not? Twain appears “Afloat” in Part...
Restocking Conservatives’ Bookshelves

Restocking Conservatives’ Bookshelves

13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (But Probably Haven’t Read) By Christopher J. Scalia. Regnery, 2025. Hardcover, 352 pages, $32.99. Reviewed by Nadya Williams. Earlier this summer, The New York Times published yet another jeremiad on fiction-reading men going the way...
Educational Counterrevolution 

Educational Counterrevolution 

Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation By Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin. Broadside, 2022. Hardcover, 288 pages, $32. Reviewed by John Kainer. Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for the words he has a madman speak in his book, The...
Palantir’s Just Republic

Palantir’s Just Republic

The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West By Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska. Crown Currency, 2025. Hardcover, 320 pages, $30. Reviewed by Alex Rosado. In their recently released book, The Technological Republic,...
The Moral Imagination of Jane Austen

The Moral Imagination of Jane Austen

The Moral Imagination of Jane Austen Leta Sundet, Ph.D.Assistant Professor of English at Hillsdale College Time: Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:30 pm ETDates:  November 25; December 2, 9, and 16Faculty: Dr. Leta Sundet Location: OnlineTuition: $100 Course Description The...
Political Economy Before Adam Smith

Political Economy Before Adam Smith

Early English Tracts on Commerce Edited by John Ramsay McCulloch. CL Press, 2024.  Paperback, 693 pages, $19.50. Reviewed by Gregory M. Collins. John Ramsay McCulloch (1789-1864) doesn’t roll off the zealous tongues of free marketeers as smoothly as Adam Smith, but he...
Science and Meaning: Parallel Tracks?

Science and Meaning: Parallel Tracks?

Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence By Samuel T. Wilkinson. Pegasus Books, 2024. Hardcover, 352 pages, $29.95.  Reviewed by Gene Callahan. Samuel T. Wilkinson, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, has written a...
Geopolitics and the Making of the Modern World

Geopolitics and the Making of the Modern World

The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars and the Making of the Modern World By Hal Brands. W.W. Norton, 2025. Hardcover, 320 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by John P. Rossi. Hal Brands, author of a handful of books on foreign policy and a professor at Johns Hopkins (as well...
The Context for Human Dignity

The Context for Human Dignity

On the Dignity of Society: Catholic Social Teaching and Natural Law By F. Russell Hittinger. The Catholic University of America Press, 2024. Paperback, 490 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Rev. Joseph Scolaro. The Church needs a strong leader now more than ever. The dignity...
Between Greatness and Hubris 

Between Greatness and Hubris 

Gems of American History: The Lecturer’s Art By Walter A. McDougall. Encounter Books, 2025. Hardcover, 336 pages, $32.99. Reviewed by Nicholas Callaghan. As we rapidly approach the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, a question remains at the fore...