Town Politics
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity By Charles L. Marohn Jr. Wiley, 2019. Hardcover, 256 pages, $25. Reviewed by Matthew Robare Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity is an amazing achievement by Charles L....
Magpies, Verbal Jugglers, and True Liberty
The Metalogicon: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium by John of Salisbury, translated by Daniel McGarry Paul Dry Books, 2009. Paperback, 305 pages, $22.95. Reviewed by Jared Zimmerer In an age of relativism and scientific...
Breaking the Crockery
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War by Louis Menand. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. Hardcover, 857 pages $35. Reviewed by Andrew Bacevich Let us dispose of the superlatives first: In terms of both style and substance, The Free World represents an...
Breaking the Leaf-Mould
Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages by Holly Ordway. Word on Fire Academic, 2021. Hardcover, 382 pages, $24. Reviewed by John Tuttle Holly Ordway’s engrossing volume Tolkien’s Modern Reading is significant in its own right, but it also marks...
Discerning the Real
The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism by D. C. Schindler. New Polity Press, 2021. Hardcover, 349 pages, $45. Reviewed by John Ehrett D. C. Schindler’s new volume The Politics of the Real is one of the most stimulating works of...
Ireland Since the Famine: An Appreciation
Ireland Since the Famine: 1850 to the Present by F. S. L. Lyons. Fontana Press, [1971] 1985. Paperback, 880 pages. Reviewed by John Rossi Fifty years ago, a book appeared that refined the writing and understanding of modern Irish history. F. S. L. Lyons’s...
Of Prophets and Presidents
Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom by Spencer W. McBride. Oxford University Press, 2021. Hardcover, 269 pages, $30. Reviewed by John Bicknell America in 1844 was a religious place. But it was not, in...
Wilson’s (Self) Determination
Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe By Larry Wolff. Stanford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 304 pages, from $30. Reviewed by Kevin J. McNamara This work is a species of modern intellectual history in the tradition of Orientalism, by Edward W....
The Enduring Mystery of War
War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan. Random House, 2020. Hardcover, 336 pages, $30. Reviewed by Michael J. Ard Times were tough for Ötzi the Iceman. Found thirty years ago in the Italian Alps, the multi-wounded corpse of the five-thousand-year-old hunter...
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."