After Such Knowledge
Sergeant Salinger: A Novel by Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary Press, 2021. Hardcover, 288 pages, $28.50. Reviewed by Carl E. Rollyson Biographical novels trouble certain readers. What is true? What is made up? Why isn’t biography enough? Why not just read Salinger,...
Everything Stays the Same
Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life by Alex Christofi. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021. Hardcover, 236 pages. $35. Reviewed by Albert Wald In an article on André Gide’s Memories of the Assize Court in the May 2020 issue of The New Criterion, former prison doctor Anthony...
The Literature of Wisdom and Enjoyment
On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Booksby Karen Swallow Prior. Brazos Press, 2018.Hardcover, 272 pages, $20. Reviewed by Daniel Buck Society needs literary critics. Time being a scarce resource, they help us to sift between the gold and the dross,...
James Burnham: Marxist, 1933–1940
By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987), who became a leading anti-communist and prominent intellectual figure in American conservatism, began his professional intellectual career as a Marxist. His early writings appeared in leading Marxist and socialist...
The Heart of Progress
A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics by Matthew W. Slaboch. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Hardcover, 208 pages, $47.50. Reviewed by Luma Simms My parents marveled at the freeways when we first came to America. As they learned to drive the...
Theodore Roosevelt and Statecraft for a World Power
First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power By Walter Zimmerman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Hardcover, 562 pages, $15. Reviewed by Jack Beyrer Teddy Roosevelt was a man so vast he contained multitudes. For progressives, the...
A Common Good Conservatism for the Common Man
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge: The Authorized, Expanded, and Annotated Edition By Calvin Coolidge, edited by Amity Shlaes and Matthew Denhart. ISI Books, 2021. Paperback, 239 pages, $22. Reviewed by Anthony Hennen Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt have seen...
The Making of a Cold War President
JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 by Fredrik Logevall. Random House, 2020. Hardcover, 792 pages, $40. Reviewed by Jason K. Duncan Last year, 2020, marked the sixtieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s election as president in 1960. Given the heated...
Diagnosing a New Despotism
Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Roger Kimball. Encounter Books, 2020. Hardcover, 128 pages, $22.50 Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Who Rules? is a valuable collection of essays by some of today’s finest...
Timely, for sure. Hope @realdonaldtrump is reading.