Forgetting the Fifth Horseman
A reflection on Dark Age Ahead, by Jane Jacobs (Random House, 2004) By Robert Grant Price “Hindsight may well expose my blind spots,” Jane Jacobs, the famed urbanist, wrote in Dark Age Ahead, the last book she wrote before her death at the age of 89. As a final...
The Authority of Reason
Let’s Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education by Jonathan Marks. Princeton University Press, 2021. Hardcover, 248 pages, $27.95. Reviewed by Matthew Stewart For those ready to give up on the university, Jonathan Marks provides encouraging counsel:...
Toward a Moral Vision of Women’s Rights
The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Erika Bachiochi. Notre Dame Press, 2021. Paperback, 422 pages, $35. Reviewed by Nicole M. King In 2017, the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, some half a million women descended upon Washington for...
Is There a Linear Path to America’s Next Civil War?
The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties By Christopher Caldwell. Simon & Schuster, 2020. Hardcover, 352 pages, $28. Reviewed by Anthony Barr Christopher Caldwell’s latest book, The Age of Entitlement, is best summarized by a Bill Clinton quote that...
The Beauty of an Integrated Life
By Bruce P. Frohnen Like many of his friends, I met Gerald Russello only a few times in person. We spoke only a few times by phone and exchanged emails only on occasion. But he was always an important part of my life. As a kind, judicious, and imaginative editor, a...
Gerald Russello, Legal Humanist
By Glen Sproviero A few years back, I was standing on a packed southbound 1 train in lower Manhattan when I noticed a fellow commuter glancing through the latest edition of The New Criterion. Looking for an icebreaker, I teased that while I had significant respect...
The Law’s Good Servant, but God’s First
By David G. Bonagura, Jr. “But he performed an even greater task, that union of reason with faith that is the mark of a Christian scholar.” So wrote Gerald J. Russello, then 27 years of age, about Christopher Dawson, the eminent Catholic historian, in his...
Lunch Man: A Remembrance of Gerald Russello
By Jack Fowler There were many, hundreds upon hundreds, of emails that catalogued 15 years of friendship and low-grade skullduggery with Gerald Joseph Russello, a.k.a. Jerry. Or was it “Gerry?” Because in all of those years he never once signed off his missives with...
Joseph Kennedy, American Fascist
The Ambassador: Joseph P. Kennedy at the Court of St. James 1938–1940 by Susan Ronald. St. Martin’s Press, 2021. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson In this meticulous, relentless biography, Joseph P. Kennedy is now firmly established in the annals of...
Timely, for sure. Hope @realdonaldtrump is reading.