Stranger Malls
Stranger Things, Season 3 Directed by the Duffer Brothers. Netflix, 2019. Reviewed by Titus Techera The third season of Stranger Things, the hit science-fiction horror series on Netflix, should have been called “Love at the Mall.” The action revolves around the...
The Socialist You Should Be Reading
The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit. Virago Modern Classics, 2017 (First published by T. Fisher Unwin, 1906) Softcover, 301 pages, $12. Reviewed by Rebekah Curtis Edith Nesbit is the ideal children’s author. Her imagination is vast, her skill for verisimilitude...
The Secular Myth
Western Culture Today and Tomorrow: Addressing the Fundamental Issues by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Ignatius Press, 2019. Paperback, 170 pages, $17. Reviewed by Casey Chalk An old friend of mine recently declared that individual American citizens cannot advocate...
How Conservatives Can Come Home
This interview with Ted V. McAllister and Bruce P. Frohnen, authors of Coming Home: Reclaiming America’s Conservative Soul, covers topics including the necessary connection between history and idealism and the enduring relationship of opportunity and equality in the...
Homesick for Eternity
Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era’s Dark Angel by Lionel Johnson, edited by Nina Antonia. Strange Attractor Press, 2019. Paperback, 216 pages, $20. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp The German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in The...
The Work of Local Culture
Coming Home: Reclaiming America’s Conservative Soul by Ted V. McAllister and Bruce P. Frohnen Encounter Books, 2019. Hardcover, 164+xxiv pages, $24. Reviewed by Richard M. Gamble In 1954, Russell Kirk, fresh on the heels of his Conservative Mind, published A Program...
From the Ground Up
American Restoration: How Faith, Family, and Personal Sacrifice Can Heal Our Nation by Timothy S. Goeglein and Craig Osten. Regnery Gateway, 2019. Hardcover, 256 pages. $29. Reviewed by Timothy D. Lusch It is obvious that America, as elsewhere, is in uncharted...
Letting Writers Do the Talking
Writers on Writing: Conversations with Allen Mendenhall edited by Allen Mendenhall. Red Dirt Press, 2019. Paperback, 230 pages. $16.95. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner Writers on Writing is a superb collection of interviews conducted by Allen Mendenhall with established...
‘All of time is cut in two’
And After All by Rhina P. Espaillat. Able Muse Press, 2019. Paperback, 130 pages, $20. Reviewed by Midge Goldberg “Without you,” Rhina Espaillat says, “all of time is cut in two.” The best poems in Espaillat’s new book, And After All, are about grief. Espaillat lost...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!