Lawyers, Natural Law, and the Problem of Pride

Lawyers, Natural Law, and the Problem of Pride

The Decline of Natural Law: How American Lawyers Once Used Natural Law and Why They Stopped by Stuart Banner. Oxford University Press, 2021. Hardcover, 264 pages, $50. Reviewed by Bruce P. Frohnen This important book picks up where R. H. Helmholz’s groundbreaking...
The Egotistic Mind

The Egotistic Mind

The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense by Gad Saad. Regnery, 2021. Hardcover, 235 pages, $29. Reviewed by Auguste Meyrat Considering the great damage done by leftist ideas throughout history and the great damage they do today, it’s a great...
Democracy and Iniquity

Democracy and Iniquity

We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy by Robert Tracy McKenzie. IVP Academic, 2021. Hardcover, 304 pages, $28. Reviewed by Casey Chalk As U.S. troops continued their exit from Afghanistan this summer, a former high-school history...
Transportation Reform and City Renewal

Transportation Reform and City Renewal

Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town By Charles L. Marohn Jr. Wiley, 2021. Hardcover, 272 pages, $25. Reviewed by Jason Jewell On the evening of December 3, 2014, seven-year-old Destiny Gonzalez was hit by a drunk driver on State...
Gazing Into the Abyss with Charles Taylor

Gazing Into the Abyss with Charles Taylor

Avenues of Faith: Conversations with Jonathan Guilbault by Charles Taylor, trans. by Yanette Shalter. Baylor University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 92 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jeffrey Wald I love short books. I love long books too; completing War and Peace a few years back...
Reconnecting Babbitt, Rejecting Rousseau

Reconnecting Babbitt, Rejecting Rousseau

The Historical Mind: Humanistic Renewal in a Post-Constitutional Age, Justin D. Garrison and Ryan R. Holston, eds. State University of New York Press, 2020. Paperback, 326 pages, $34. Reviewed by Jason C. Phillips On January 26, 2021, President Biden announced a...
Desire Is the Human Condition

Desire Is the Human Condition

Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis. St Martins Press, 2021. Hardcover, 304 pp, $29. Reviewed by Thomas J Bevan “All are lunatics,” Ambrose Bierce once said, “but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.” And the...
Wild, and the Problem of Evil

Wild, and the Problem of Evil

All Things Left Wild: A Novel by James Wade. Blackstone Publishing, 2020. Hardcover, 304 pages, $28. Reviewed by‏ Christopher Landrum Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil, as you make it. And, if you have lived a day, you have seen...
‘God, If There Was a God’

‘God, If There Was a God’

Missionaries: A Novel by Phil Klay. Penguin Press, 2020, Hardcover, 416 pages, $28. Reviewed by Joshua Hren It isn’t surprising that Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity begins by immersing us in the rejection thereof, the highways of doubt and the...
A People’s History of Philadelphia

A People’s History of Philadelphia

Philadelphia Stories: People and Their Places in Early America by C. Dallett Hemphill, edited by Rodney Hessinger and Daniel K. Richter. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Hardcover, 392 pages, $35. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro Philadelphia Stories: People and...