Conservatism? What a Concept

Conservatism? What a Concept

Conservatism (Key Concepts in Political Theory) by Edmund Neill. Polity, 2021. Paperback, 180 pages, $19.95 Reviewed by Daniel Pitt Edmund Neill, in a chapter called “Defining Conservatism,” tells us that this “book seeks to define the concept of conservatism.” To do...
Happy with Aquinas

Happy with Aquinas

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purposeby J. Budziszewski. Cambridge University Press, 2020. Paperback, 704 pages, $40. Reviewed by Jesse Russell St. Thomas Aquinas has been one of the principal intellectual mainstays of post-World...
Diaries of a Poor Judge of Character

Diaries of a Poor Judge of Character

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume Two): 1938–43 Edited by Simon Heffer. Hutchinson, 2021. Hardcover, 1120 pages, $45.90. Reviewed by John Rossi “Chips” Channon was born in Chicago in 1897 to a moderately wealthy family. During the First World War he served in...
Bolshevism, Truth, and Ancient Greek Philosophy

Bolshevism, Truth, and Ancient Greek Philosophy

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Redux By Pedro Blas González Beginning in the early twentieth century, Bolshevism’s incessant propaganda and disinformation campaigns have made it next to impossible, even for thoughtful persons, to separate appearance from reality...
Originalism on American Terms

Originalism on American Terms

America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding by Robert R. Reilly. Ignatius Press, 2020. Hardcover, 384 pages, $28. Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution by Lee J. Strang. Cambridge University Press, 2019. Paperback, 326 pages, $35....
Balzac: The Man for My Thirties?

Balzac: The Man for My Thirties?

By Jeffrey Wald I  have come to realize that a writer has indelibly marked each decade of my life. In my first decade of life, that author was Franklin Dixon. All right, I understand that “Franklin W. Dixon,” the author of Hardy Boys, was a pen name used by multiple...
A Prodigal Search for Self and the South

A Prodigal Search for Self and the South

Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South By Rick Bragg. Knopf, 2020. Hardcover, 256 pages, $26.95 Reviewed by Owen Edwards Where I Come From by Rick Bragg was published a few months before Uprooted by Grace Olmstead, and has strong resonances with it. Bragg’s...
A Crisis and the Heroic March of Medicine

A Crisis and the Heroic March of Medicine

The Great War and the Birth of Modern Medicine: A History by Thomas Helling, M.D. Pegasus Books, 2022. Hardcover, 496 pages, $32. Reviewed by Karl C. Shaffenburg The inscription on Dr. Thomas Helling’s book, The Great War and the Birth of Modern Medicine: A History...
Scruton Makes His Case

Scruton Makes His Case

Against the Tide: The Best of Roger Scruton’s Columns, Commentaries, and Criticism Edited by Mark Dooley. ‎Bloomsbury Continuum, 2022. Hardcover, 256 pages, $28. Reviewed by John G. Grove How should the conservative respond to a time in which so much seems to be lost?...