The Death and Life of Jane Jacobs’s Hometown
Jane Jacobs’s First City: Learning from Scranton, Pennsylvania By Glenna Lang. New Village Press, 2021. Hardcover, 468 Pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Josh Bowman. Places, for better or worse, are a part of who we are and who we become. Along with our faith and families of...
The Destruction of American Social Cohesion
The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free By Mike Gonzalez. Encounter Books, 2020. Hardcover, 224 pages, $28.99. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks. The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free is...
Ted McAllister’s Place: A Memorial Tribute
By Bruce P. Frohnen. Ted V. McAllister died on January 27 after a long, hard-fought battle with cancer. A native Oklahoman, he spent most of his career living in Moorpark (culturally quite distant from Los Angeles) while teaching at the Pepperdine University School of...
Losing Homer
Homer: The Very Idea By James I. Porter. University of Chicago Press, 2021. Hardcover, 280 pages, $27.50. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. In 2011 Harvard Professor of English and noted historicist critic Stephen Greenblatt published The Swerve. In this fascinating, if...
The Story Behind “Hitler’s Greatest Strategic Error”
Hitler’s American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War By Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman. Basic Books, 2021. Hardcover, 528 pages, $35. Reviewed by John Rossi. Among the many questions concerning World War II that have fascinated and...
Psalms for Heaven, Earth, and Everywhere In Between
Christian Poetry In America Since 1940: An Anthology Edited by Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas. Iron Pen/Paraclete Press, 2022. Paperback, 208 pages, $25. Reviewed by Steven Knepper. Christian Poetry In America Since 1940 begins with a proclamation: “There has been a...
In Defense of Maintenance
The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work that Matters Most By Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell. Currency, 2020. Hardcover, 272 pages, $28. Reviewed by Hans Zeiger. Sam Smith, the former president of Washington State University...
Marginal No More: Willmoore Kendall as Essential Conservative
Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall By Christopher Owen. Lexington Books, 2021. Hardcover, 256 pages, $105. Reviewed by Jason Ross. As the conservative movement is crumbling, many outside of that movement’s mainstream are tracing their way back to...
In Defense of Divine Justice
Is God a Vindictive Bully? Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments By Paul Copan. Baker Academic, 2022. Paperback, 320 pages, $27.99. Reviewed by Annmarie McLaughlin. Recently, while I was reading Paul Copan’s Is God a Vindictive Bully? and...
Summer is here and the days are long. Slowing schedules allow time for many of us to sink into the queue of books that have been patiently waiting for us over the busyness of our end of spring schedules.
@lsheahan, @DavidGBonaguraJ, @darrellfalconbu
Ah, just your typical 663-page light summer beach read for a @ubookman book review. Makes Wealth of Nations look like a Substack essay.