Tool, Mirror, Goad: What Is Christian Legal Thought For?
Christian Legal Thought. Materials and Cases by Patrick M. Brennan and William S. Brewbaker III. Foundation Press, 2017. Hardcover, 678 pages, $213. Reviewed by Gerald J. Russello Does Christianity have a place in the law? Many American jurists said it did, and most...
The Nation’s First Architect
Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe by Jean H. Baker. Oxford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 304 pages, $35. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro Benjamin Henry Latrobe is, in two ways, not Pierre L’Enfant—he was not, despite his surname, French; and he...
Nietzsche’s Puritan Warriors
Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That Spawned America’s Social Justice Warriors by Mark T. Mitchell. Regnery Gateway, 2020. Hardcover, 148 pages, $27. Reviewed by John Ehrett It is unfortunate that Mark T. Mitchell’s Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That...
The Rise of Sexless Moralism?
By Titus Techera American pop culture has quickly moved on from Game of Thrones to The Mandalorian. From HBO to Disney. From putting the adult in adultery to infantilizing everything virtual reality can infantilize, which is virtually everything, of course. From...
Yes It’s Poetry, But Is It Good?
The Soul is a Stranger in this World: Essays on Poets and Poetry By Micah Mattix. Cascade Books, 2020. Softcover, 164 pages, $21. Reviewed by Karl C. Schaffenburg Lovers of poetry will find much to enjoy in this volume, which collects short essays written by the...
An Immense Old People’s Home
Notes on Bergson and Descartes: Philosophy, Christianity, and Modernity in Contestation By Charles Péguy. Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Bruce K. Ward. Foreword by John Milbank. Cascade Books, 2019. Paperback, 304 pages, $35. Review by Nicholas Meverel On...
An Imitation of Christ
The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather. Custom House, 2019. Hardcover, 528 pages, $29. Reviewed by Joseph Barnas If you have heard of Witold Pilecki, odds are you know him as “the man who...
Skiing Alta with WFB
William F. Meehan III ‘Alta’ isn’t a word you hear often in fashionable conversations in skiing circles … You can live out a casual lifetime, as a casual skier, and not know about Alta, and the odd thing is that this really suits the Alta people just fine. There is...
Fukuyama’s Lopsided Identity
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment By Francis Fukuyama. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Hardcover, 240 pages, $26. Reviewed by Emina Melonic The current discussions of “identity” today are overwhelmingly focused on identity politics as...
Ah, just your typical 663-page light summer beach read for a @ubookman book review. Makes Wealth of Nations look like a Substack essay.