Progressing to Nowhere?

Progressing to Nowhere?

Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea by Bradley C. S. Watson. University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. Hardcover, 251 pages, $45. Reviewed by John C. Chalberg Just who were the original progressives of a century ago? They reached all the way from Social...
Translating Great Books

Translating Great Books

The Inklings, the Victorians, and the Moderns: Reconciling Tradition in the Modern Age by Christopher Butynskyi. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 206 pages, $90. Reviewed by James A. Davenport Since Buckley, it has often been said of...
Lines of Descent

Lines of Descent

Old House of Fear: A Novel by Russell Kirk, introduction by James Panero. Criterion Books, [1961] 2019. Paperback, 264 pages, $19. Reviewed by Jeremy Seaton Russell Kirk’s Old House of Fear recounts Hugh Logan’s trip from Michigan to Carnglass, a scarcely known island...
The Surprise of Order

The Surprise of Order

Beauty: What It Is and Why It Matters by John-Mark L. Miravalle. Sophia Institute Press, 2019. Paperback, 176 pages, $15. Reviewed by John Tuttle A plate garnished and well seasoned, a garden bed of blooming flora, the yawning archways of a grand cathedral, and the...
The World the Habsburgs Built

The World the Habsburgs Built

The Habsburgs: To Rule the World by Martyn Rady. Basic Books 2020. Hardcover, 416 pages, $32. Reviewed by Avi Woolf At their peak in the sixteenth century, they ruled much of the known world. A beacon of the true, universal Catholic faith to many, a source of sorrow...
Academe’s Poisoned Groves

Academe’s Poisoned Groves

The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done by John M. Ellis. Encounter Books, 2020. Hardcover, $224 pages, $26. Reviewed by Lee Oser The irony of the year 2020 is that our culture is blind. By forsaking the light of...
Ishmael’s Real Name Was Jonah

Ishmael’s Real Name Was Jonah

The Interpretive Key that Allows Us to See Melville’s Work as a Unified Whole By Will Hoyt Like any other card-carrying American I have long believed that Melville wrote only one great work. Moby-Dick is—unquestionably if improbably—the one American novel against...
Discouraging Charity

Discouraging Charity

Who Killed Civil Society? The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms by Howard A. Husock. Encounter Books, 2019. Hardcover, 176 pages $24. Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl It’s a likely sign of the times. On a Tuesday last December, the phone rang with...
The Order that Transcends the Upheavals

The Order that Transcends the Upheavals

The Persistence of Order, Vol. I: Essays on Religion and Culture Edited by Christopher Dawson and T. F. Burns. Cluny Media, 2019. Paperback, 304 pages, $19.95 The Persistence of Order, Vol. II: Essays on Politics and Society Edited by Christopher Dawson and...