What Hath Lepore Wrought
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. W. W. Norton, 2018. Hardcover, 960 pages, $40. Part Two, The People (1800–1865) Reviewed by Daniel N. Gullotta Sweeping histories of the United States by a single scholar always worry me. This is not to say...
Citizenship and the Fitful History of the American Way
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. W. W. Norton, 2018. Hardcover, 960 pages, $40. Part Three, The State (1866–1945) Reviewed by Robert Greene II The rationale for Jill Lepore’s attempt at a new, fresh national narrative, These Truths, can be...
Recent Domestic History
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. W. W. Norton, 2018. Hardcover, 960 pages, $40. Part Four, The Machine (1946–2016) Reviewed by Lauren F. Turek Historian Jill Lepore opens her sweeping, synthetic overview of United States history with an...
Would You Recognize a Dystopia If You Saw One?
By Ryan J. Barilleaux Dystopia is all the rage these days. Not only does it make for hit television, in the form of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale or Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, but it is the concern of many popular fiction and Internet ruminations. Indeed, it...
Churchill as Communicator
Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts. Viking, 2018. Hardcover, 1152 pages, $40. Reviewed by Joseph Bottum and Benjamin F. Jones There are now more than a thousand biographies of Winston Churchill. Or so declares the publicity material accompanying Andrew...
Tribe, Nation, Empire
The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony. Basic Books, 2018. Hardcover, 285 pages, $30. Reviewed by Glenn A. Moots In a lamentable time when Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson are considered prominent conservatives, Yoram Hazony may be the most important conservative you...
Animating Our Souls
Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art by Susan Napier. Yale University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 344 pages, $30. Reviewed by Titus Techera We owe Susan Napier and the Yale University Press a debt of gratitude for her efforts in Miyazakiworld, a book that shows everything...
Reclaiming a Place for Conversation
Them: Why We Hate Each Other—And How to Heal by Ben Sasse St. Martin’s Press, 2018. Hardcover, 288 pages, $29. Reviewed by Anthony M. Barr Conservatives in twenty-first century America often fear an assortment of boogeymen that may or may not actually exist. Whether...
On the Endlessness of the World Story
By James V. Schall, S. J. In The Tolkien Reader is found his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories.” At the end of the essay, we find some explanatory “Notes” listed according to letters—A, B, C, and so on. The Note listed as “H” is the one that interests me here. Note “H”...
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!