The Literature of Wisdom and Enjoyment

The Literature of Wisdom and Enjoyment

On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Booksby Karen Swallow Prior. Brazos Press, 2018.Hardcover, 272 pages, $20. Reviewed by Daniel Buck Society needs literary critics. Time being a scarce resource, they help us to sift between the gold and the dross,...
James Burnham: Marxist, 1933–1940

James Burnham: Marxist, 1933–1940

By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987), who became a leading anti-communist and prominent intellectual figure in American conservatism, began his professional intellectual career as a Marxist. His early writings appeared in leading Marxist and socialist...
The Heart of Progress

The Heart of Progress

A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics by Matthew W. Slaboch. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Hardcover, 208 pages, $47.50. Reviewed by Luma Simms My parents marveled at the freeways when we first came to America. As they learned to drive the...
Theodore Roosevelt and Statecraft for a World Power

Theodore Roosevelt and Statecraft for a World Power

First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power By Walter Zimmerman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Hardcover, 562 pages, $15. Reviewed by Jack Beyrer Teddy Roosevelt was a man so vast he contained multitudes. For progressives, the...
A Common Good Conservatism for the Common Man

A Common Good Conservatism for the Common Man

The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge: The Authorized, Expanded, and Annotated Edition By Calvin Coolidge, edited by Amity Shlaes and Matthew Denhart. ISI Books, 2021. Paperback, 239 pages, $22. Reviewed by Anthony Hennen Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt have seen...
The Making of a Cold War President

The Making of a Cold War President

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 by Fredrik Logevall. Random House, 2020. Hardcover, 792 pages, $40. Reviewed by Jason K. Duncan Last year, 2020, marked the sixtieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s election as president in 1960. Given the heated...
Diagnosing a New Despotism

Diagnosing a New Despotism

Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Roger Kimball. Encounter Books, 2020. Hardcover, 128 pages, $22.50 Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Who Rules? is a valuable collection of essays by some of today’s finest...
Fusionism, Gratitude, and the New Right

Fusionism, Gratitude, and the New Right

The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order By Donald J. Devine. Encounter Books, 2021. Hardcover, 384 pages, $32. Reviewed by James Davenport The future of conservatism in America remains a question as members of an emerging new right and an older guard of...
A Singular Universal

A Singular Universal

The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene by Richard Greene. W. W. Norton, 2021. Hardcover, xvi + 591 pp., $40. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz Jean-Paul Sartre once classified Gustave Flaubert as a “singular universal.” For Sartre, such a writer’s oeuvre becomes a...
Ordinary Time

Ordinary Time

The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernity by Paul Mariani Paraclete Press, 2019 Paperback, 240 pages, $25 Review by Daniel James Sundahl There’s a moment in ordinary time when Dr. William Carlos Williams writes of passing a young...