The Power Has Flowed Away
Serotonin: A Novelby Michel Houellebecq. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 320 pages, $27. Reviewed by Zak Slayback “Did we yield to the illusion of individual freedom, of an open life, of infinite possibilities? It’s possible,” Michel Houellebecq’s...
Hope for a Rebirth of Common Sense in the Academy?
Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right Edited by Lee Trepanier and Grant Havers. Lexington Books, Political Theory for Today Series, 2019. Cloth, 202 pages, $95. Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser There’s a famous aphorism often wrongly attributed to Oscar Wilde,...
Lessons from a Forgotten Papacy
The Pearl of Great Price: Pius VI & the Sack of Rome by Christian Browne. Arouca Press, 2020 Paperback, 146 pages, $16.95 Review by David G. Bonagura, Jr. American knowledge of the Roman Catholic papacy does not run deep. It begins in the fifth century with Pope...
The Substance of Style
Farnsworth’s Classical English Style by Ward Farnsworth. David R. Godine, 2020 Hardcover, 145 pages, $27.95 Reviewed by Cory L. Andrews Bad and lazy writing, George Orwell famously insisted, betrays bad and lazy thinking. It also burdens and alienates the reader, who...
Defending the Right and the Good
Russell Kirk and The University Bookman By George H. Nash In an interview late in his career, Russell Kirk told a story about a “forgotten mill pond” in the village of Mecosta, Michigan. Since boyhood, he recalled, he had enjoyed tossing pebbles into this pond and...
The Quest for Neutral Ground
The Age of Selfies: Reasoning About Rights When the Stakes Are Personal by Adam J. MacLeod. Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. Paper, 141 pgs, $25. Reviewed by Allen Mendenhall Salma Hayek makes headlines each time she posts a selfie on Instagram. I know this because...
Competition Is Beautiful
The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition by Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn. Wiley, 2018. Hardcover, 320 pages, $28. Reviewed by Ryan Shinkel South Park is an underrated resource of American political science. One particular episode shows our...
Toward a Renewal of Europe
Renovatio Europae: For a Hesperialist Renewal of Europe Edited by David Engels. Groningen: Blue Tiger Media, 2019. Hardcover, €19.50. Reviewed by Scott B. Nelson As always, Europe is in crisis. Some lament the European Union’s longstanding democratic deficit. Others...
James Burnham and the Asia-Pacific: 1941–1978
By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987) was an American political philosopher and public intellectual who traveled the intellectual journey from Marxism (the Trotskyite version) to conservatism. When he broke with Marxism in the late 1930s, he began writing for...
Ah, just your typical 663-page light summer beach read for a @ubookman book review. Makes Wealth of Nations look like a Substack essay.