The Causes of Moral Agency
Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power By Ian V. Rowe. Templeton Press, 2022. Hardcover, 304 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Rachel Ferguson. The debate over moral agency—whether it...
Resurrecting John Keats
Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph By Lucasta Miller. Knopf, 2022. Hardcover, 368 pages, $32.50. Reviewed by Paul Krause. John Keats wrote to his brother on October 14, 1818, “I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.” Those prophetic...
Partisan Citizens
I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Governance Tony Woodlief. Encounter Books, 2021. Hardcover, 264 pages, $30.99. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks. There is much talk among progressives about being a good “global citizen.” By this, they...
Navigating the “In Between” of Belief
Godsends: From Default Atheism to the Surprise of Revelation By William Desmond. University of Notre Dame Press, 2021. Hardcover, 326 pages, $65.00. Reviewed by Rev. Joseph Scolaro. Metaxu is likely not a word in the lexicon of many seasoned philosophers, let alone in...
Richard Weaver Explained Our Cultural Predicament Over 70 Years Ago
By Francis P. Sempa. In his 1948 masterpiece Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver assessed the cultural decline afflicting the West caused by the elite abandonment of the Judeo-Christian heritage. In the book’s introduction, Weaver wrote that his book was about...
The Traditions That Gave Us Homer
Hearing Homer’s Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry By Robert Kanigel. Knopf, 2021. Hardcover, 336 pages, $28.95. Reviewed by J. L. Wall. It can be difficult to escape the image of Homer as blind bard and near-inventor of human literature. Just glance at...
Whose Truth? Whose Power?
Slave State: Rereading Orwell’s 1984 by David Lowenthal. St. Augustine’s Press, 2021. Paperback, 100 pages, $14. Reviewed by Robert Grant Price. It is impossible to mention George Orwell’s name, let alone write about him (i.e., such and such is “Orwellian”), without...
Two Tales of Watergate
Watergate: A New History By Garrett M. Graff. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2022. Hardcover, 832 pages, $35. The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President By Geoff Shepard. Bombardier Books, 2021. Hardcover, 384 pages, $30. Reviewed...
These Roman Things
David Jones and Rome: Reimagining the Decline of Western Civilization by Jasmine Hunter Evans. Oxford University Press, 2022. Hardcover, 432 pages, $115. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. In 1964, poet-painter David Jones lamented changes underway in the Roman Catholic...
Timely, for sure. Hope @realdonaldtrump is reading.