Roger Scruton, RIP
By Richard Cocks With the passing of Roger Scruton his contributions to religious, political, and philosophical topics will be sorely missed. His calm, thoughtful essays and books were especially appreciated by those dissenting thinkers willing to deviate from strains...
The Patterns of Living
Cities Alive: Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and the Roots of the New Urban Renaissance by Michael W. Mehaffy. Sustasis Press, 2017. Paperback, $20. Reviewed by Gene Callahan I first encountered the work of the great urban theorist Jane Jacobs due to the...
The Children Are in Charge
Campusland: A Novel by Scott Johnston. St. Martin’s Press, 2019. Hardcover, 322 pages, $28. Reviewed by Matthew Stewart Would the president of an elite university cave in to the demands of campus militants to the tune of $50 million in order to buy temporary peace? In...
Practice Makes Virtue
How to Be Unlucky: Reflections on the Pursuit of Virtue by Joshua Gibbs. CiRCE Institute, 2018. Paperback, 239 pages. $16. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner If we were to judge a book by its cover, we would likely steer clear of Joshua Gibbs’s latest work. Titled How to...
That Sacred Canopy
The Free Speech Century by Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone. Oxford University Press, 2019. Paperback, 376 pages, $21.95. Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl In the final chapter to Lee Bollinger’s and Geoffrey R. Stone’s The Free Speech Century, the editors pose a...
Bair, Beauvoir, and the Becketeers
Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir by Deidre Bair. Nan A. Talese, 2019. Hardcover, 368 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Michial Farmer When she set out to write her award-winning biography of Samuel Beckett, Deirdre Bair had never even read...
Poets of Brutality and Redemption
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays by Wendell Berry. Counterpoint [1993], 2018. Paperback, 208 pages, $18. Reviewed by Marlo Safi Today, brutality abounds. In its countless iterations, whether the brutality toward the unborn; the poor and...
Fly-Fishing and the Constitution
A Republic, If You Can Keep It by Neil Gorsuch with Jane Nitze and David Feder. Crown Forum, 2019. Cloth, 352 pages, $30. Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser More than two centuries ago, Samuel Johnson made the point that there were some things that were remarkable not...
Saint Louis and the Convert Immigrants
The Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX by William Chester Jordan. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 200 pages, $35. Reviewed by James Baresel My suspicions are that barely a minority of well-read conservatives with an avid but...
Summer is here and the days are long. Slowing schedules allow time for many of us to sink into the queue of books that have been patiently waiting for us over the busyness of our end of spring schedules.
@lsheahan, @DavidGBonaguraJ, @darrellfalconbu
Ah, just your typical 663-page light summer beach read for a @ubookman book review. Makes Wealth of Nations look like a Substack essay.