Nerve Plasm Palpitations?
Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition by Patricia S. Churchland W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. Hardback, $27.95 Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl A caveat to a common reader who might think to read Patricia Churchland’s Conscience: The Origins of Moral...
Free Ride
Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road by Matthew Crawford. William Morrow, 2020. Hardcover, 368 pages, $29. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro “When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler!” So reads a famous American propaganda poster from World War II,...
Aristotle’s Timely Guide to Human Happiness
By Auguste Meyrat One of the paradoxes of modernity is that as living has become easier and more pleasurable, people have become sadder. Depression and loneliness were already major problems in the developed world, and have become even worse with the COVID-19...
Is the Religious Right Really so Incomprehensible?
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism By Benjamin M. Freidman. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. Hardcover, 560 pages, $37.50 Reviewed by James E. Hartley Sometimes it seems like discussions in this country are taking place in two isolated camps. Every now and then, that suspicion...
How to Read the News and Stay Happy
Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News by Jeffrey Bilbro. InterVarsity Press, 2021. Hardcover, 200 pages, $24. Reviewed by Casey Chalk “We’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning,” proclaimed then-presidential candidate...
Snowden Speaks of Africa
By Anika T. Prather “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the Flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” —Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” African Americans have always dreamed of another world. We have...
Killing the Boomers
Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster by Helen Andrews. Sentinel, 2021. Hardcover, 256 pages, $27. Reviewed by Anthony M. Barr My history thesis advisor in college was fond of saying that one of the main drivers in new scholarship is...
The Fruits of Empire
The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria by Owen White. Harvard University Press, 2021. Hardcover, 336 pages, $39.39. Reviewed by Luke Nicastro Nearly sixty years after the demise of French Algeria, both colonizer and colonized continue to...
Craftsmanship as Social and Political Endeavor
Craft: An American History. by Glenn Adamson. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. Hardcover, 400 pages. $22.50. Reviewed by Clayton Trutor Glenn Adamson’s new book has completely blown my mind. Like so many great works of history, Craft: An American History takes a seemingly...
Timely, for sure. Hope @realdonaldtrump is reading.