An Architect Reconsiders ‘The Architecture of Servitude and Boredom’
By Erik Bootsma When Russell Kirk wrote “The Architecture of Servitude and Boredom” in the early 1980s, one would be hard pressed to find architecture at a lower point. In his essay, Dr. Kirk describes how it came to pass that over the course of the previous forty...
A Landmark Tragedy
New York’s Original Penn Station: The Rise and Tragic Fall of an American Landmark by Paul M. Kaplan The History Press, 2019. Paperback, 176 pages, $22. Reviewed by Matthew M. Robare The original Penn Station, which opened in 1910 and was torn down for the current...
Mobocracy and the Founding
The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America By T. H. Breen. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 216 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jason Ross In the midst of a wave of populist revolutions upsetting global politics, Timothy...
Accountancy and Authority
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Back Bay Books, 2012. Paperback, 597 pages, $18. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet At a certain point you realize that David Foster Wallace is as much a horror writer as Stephen King, and the monsters under his bed are twins: absorption...
Murray’s Lyric Lament
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam By Douglas Murray. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018. Paperback, 384 pages, $20. Reviewed by Henry George Over August and September of 2015 nearly 2 million people entered Europe. Germany added 1–2 percent of its...
It Will Mean What the Words Say!
The Essential Works of Thomas More Ed. by Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith. Yale University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 1520 pages, $100. Reviewed by Kenneth Craycraft Three scenes from A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt’s play about the elevation and martyrdom of...
Why We’re All Playing Identity Politics
Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. Simon & Schuster, 2020. Hardcover, 336 pages, $28. Reviewed by Austin Coffey Ezra Klein—the political journalist, blogger, former cable news host, co-founder of Vox, and current editor-at-large thereof—has published his first...
Varieties of the British Right
Neo-Tories: The Revolt of British Conservatives against Democracy and Political Modernity (1929–1939) by Bernhard Dietz. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Hardcover, 328 pages, $120 (Paper, $40.) Reviewed by James Baresel One could easily suspect that a book with the title...
Dorothy L. Sayers’s Tough Love
The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers: Selections from Her Novels, Plays, Letters, and Essays Edited by Carole Vanderhoof. Plough Publishing House, 2018. Paperback, 241 pages, $18. Reviewed by Emina Melonic Famously called by C. S. Lewis “gleefully ogreish,” Dorothy L....
Ah, just your typical 663-page light summer beach read for a @ubookman book review. Makes Wealth of Nations look like a Substack essay.