What We’re Reading, Summer 2019
A baker’s dozen of Bookman contributors and friends share their summer reading plans. Bruce Frohnen This summer I will read some about the state of our republic, and some about the state of our souls. Of course, the two are related. I hope to learn more about their...
A Prophet of Conservative Realism
Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution By Tucker Carlson. Free Press, 2018. Hardcover, 256 pages, $28. Reviewed by Sumantra Maitra Boris Johnson, before he turned to a goofy Mayor of London and subsequently the...
The Small and the Human, and ‘Free America’
The Bookman is pleased to present this excerpt from a forthcoming book, Land & Liberty: The Best of ‘Free America’, which is edited and introduced by Allan C. Carlson, with a preface by Sir Roger Scruton. It will be published by the Wethersfield Institute. By...
From New York to Chartres with La Farge
By Stephen Schmalhofer Sixteen days before Willa Cather died she wrote to Sigrid Undset lamenting “the strange deterioration in human beings” evident in the desire of seemingly every American “to want to live in New York City, drink cocktails, and wear outrageous...Dr. Jeffrey Polet
Dr. Jeffrey Polet Jeff Polet is Director of the Ford Leadership Forum at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. Previously he was a Professor of Political Science at Hope College, and before that at Malone College in Canton, OH. A native of West Michigan, he...
More Than Mildly Amusing
Mr. Mehan’s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals by Matthew Mehan. TAN Books, 2018. Hardcover, 135 pages. $24.95. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner Few people have the chance to write a book with their best friend. Few Shakespeare scholars choose to write children’s books....
What Makes the Midwest Midwestern?
Finding a New Midwestern History edited by Jon K. Lauck, Gleaves Whitney, and Joseph Hogan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Hardcover, 365 pp. $55. Reviewed by Jonathan Kasparek The field of Midwestern history is in the midst of an exciting renaissance as...
Fear Your Toaster
Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World by Bruce Schneier W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. Hardcover, 288 pages, $28. Reviewed by Michael J. Ard What happens when everything is a computer, connected to everything else? How then...
Ideology Unbounded in San Francisco
Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and Ten Days That Shook San Francisco by Daniel J. Flynn. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2018. Hardcover, 288 pages, $28. Reviewed by Matthew Stokes Conservatives of all stripes learn at a very young age that there are certain...
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!