Toward a Moral Vision of Women’s Rights

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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...
The Jeffersonian Judge

The Jeffersonian Judge

Irreconcilable Founders: Spencer Roane, John Marshall, and the Nature of America’s Constitutional Republic By David Johnson. LSU Press, 2021 Hardcover, 256 pages, $45. Reviewed by John Grove There is nothing new under the sun, and that certainly applies to modern-day...
Beyond Black and White

Beyond Black and White

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright. Library of America, 2021. Hardcover, 240 pages, $23. Reviewed by James E. Hartley Richard Wright’s most recently published novel is a cause célèbre. The Man Who Lived Underground, originally written in 1941, was...
The Last Honest Pagan

The Last Honest Pagan

Far from Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art by Daniel Oppenheimer. University of Texas Press, 2021 Hardcover, 152 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp “The pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. By the end of his civilization he had discovered...