A More Hallowed Society
The Lawgivers: The Parallel Lives of Numa Pompilius and Lycurgus of Sparta Translated by C. Scot Hicks and David V. Hicks. CiRCE Institute, 2019. Paperback, 167 pages, $19. Reviewed by Anthony M. Barr Plutarch’s Lives is one of the most illuminating works written in...
What Does Athens Have to Do with America?
Ancient Greece and American Conservatism: Classical Influence on the Modern Right By John Bloxham. I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Hardcover, 284 pages, $99 (Paperback, $40). Reviewed by Grant Havers The application of ancient Greek thought and history to...
Getting Out of the Hole
On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts by James K. A. Smith. Brazos Press, 2019. Hardcover, 256 pages, $25. Reviewed by James Davenport There is an old parable I have often been told. It goes something like this: A man is...
When Left and Right Agree
Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream By Nicholas Lemann. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 306 pages, $28. Reviewed by Gerard T. Mundy To capture the gravity of the social problems plaguing the United States, one can...
Prin’s Original Fictions
Original Prin: A Novel by Randy Boyagoda. Biblioasis, 2019. Paperback, 224 pages, $15. Reviewed by Joshua Hren Toward the end of Original Prin our protagonist Princely St. John Umbiligoda sifts through the Duty-Free shop in the Dragomans airport only to find the...
Musket Before the Ax: Howells and Ohio
Stories of Ohio by William Dean Howells. Belt Publishing, 2019. Paperback, 256 pages, $14.95. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman The year 1860 was a predictably good one for William Dean Howells, an up-and-coming man of letters from Ohio. In the four years prior, Howells...
Passing through the Gathering Dusk
Winesburg, Ohio at 100 By James E. Person Jr. Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson. W. W. Norton & Company, [1919] 1995. Paperback, 256 pages, $12.64. The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without...
Christ in the Outback
God Is Good for You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times by Greg Sheridan. Allen & Unwin, 2018. Paperback, 358 pages, $20. Reviewed by Karl Schmude Greg Sheridan is one of Australia’s leading journalists and media commentators. As the long-time Foreign...
Leviathan at Bay, at Last?
Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein in the Administrative State By Peter J. Wallison. Encounter Books, 2018. Cloth, 216 pages, $24. Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser When, in the decades to come, historians look back at the early twenty-first century, they will...
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.