The Lakota: A Human Story
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen. Yale University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 544 pages, $35. Revivewed by Santi Ruiz On this year’s Indigenous People’s Day I encountered a curious phenomenon. My social circles are largely...
The Soul of a Free Man
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30. Reviewed by Kyle Sammin In the American Revolution, Enlightenment principles, natural rights, and the traditions of English...
The Last Plantagenet
Uncrowned Queen: The Life of Margaret Beaufort, Mother of the Tudors By Nicola Tallis. Basic Books, 2020. Hardcover, 416 pages, $32. Reviewed by Garrett Robinson The Tudors, unfortunately famous now primarily through film and pulp-histories, have a name for themselves...
Holding a Wolf by the Ears
Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution by Jeff Broadwater. University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Hardcover, 296 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jason Ross No friendship in American history has been as consequential as that between Thomas Jefferson and...
A Refreshed and Refreshing Federalist
Reflection and Choice: The Federalists, the Anti-Federalists, and the Debate that Defined America Edited by Gary L. Gregg II and Aaron N. Coleman. McConnell Center Books, 2020. Hardcover, 652 pages, $49.95. Reviewed by Michael Federici Since the original publication...
Naive Virtue?
First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks. Harper, 2020. Hardcover, 416 pages, $30. Reviewed by Casey Chalk A classic, said Mark Twain, is “a book which people praise but don’t...
A Life for the Longfellow Renaissance
Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas A. Basbanes. Knopf, 2020. Hardcover, 461 pages, $37.50. Reviewed by William F. Meehan III Henry Wadsworth Longfellow faded so far into American cultural memory that it is easy to forget he was the...
More than an Education
The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams By David S. Brown. Scribners, 2020. Hardcover, 426 pages. $25. Reviewed by Clayton Trutor The year I was graduated from high school was the same one in which all of those...
Hemingway Finds His Voice
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings, 1918–1926 Edited by Robert W. Trogdon. Library of America, 2020. Hardcover, 863 pages, $35. Reviewed by Frank Freeman It was surely no accident that the first Library of America volume devoted to Ernest...
Timely, for sure. Hope @realdonaldtrump is reading.