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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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’
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...
For America250, @lsheahan enters the fray:
What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom
A "revolution not made, but prevented.” Russell Kirk fondly and frequently quoted E. J. Payne’s pithy summary of Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution.
"So yes, Lord Alfred, perhaps you are right after all. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world! Perhaps one last Ulyssean adventure remains beyond the sunset, and perhaps some work of noble note may yet be done."