At the Suffrage of the State
Liberal Suppression: 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech by Philip Hamburger. University of Chicago, 2018. Hardcover, 432 pages, $55. Reviewed by Bruce Frohnen Why read legal history, especially if you are not a lawyer? The field is dominated by specialists and...
Portrait of a Genius
Portraits of Wittgenstein, Abridged edition Edited by F. A. Flowers III and Ian Ground. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Paperback, 512 pages, $48. Reviewed by Frank Freeman The most infamous “episode” in the life of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)...
After the Guns Fall Silent
War and Remembrance: The Story of the American Battle Monuments Commission by Thomas H. Conner. University Press of Kentucky, 2018. Hardcover, 376 pages, $50. Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl An obscure poem reads like this: “That bullet forever depriving him of...
Sour ’68
by Joseph Bottum and Justin L. Blessinger Ever feel like 2018 is 1968 come back from the grave? Hello Darkness, my old friend, Simon and Garfunkel sang in the 1960s, I’ve come to talk with you again. Fifty years on, as 2018 winds down to a sour expiration, like the...
A Plodding Penn
William Penn: A Life Andrew R. Murphy Oxford University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 488 pages, $35. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson By the time William Penn (1644–1718) received his charter in 1681 from King Charles II for a new American colony he was already behind the times....
The Possibilities and Impossibilities of Willmoore Kendall
by Joshua Tait There are many legends about the political theorist Willmoore Kendall. A great deal of them are true. He was a founding editor of National Review. He reported on the Spanish Civil War. He worked in military intelligence. He spoke three languages and...
An Inherently Meaningful Cosmos
The Inklings and King Arthur: J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, & Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain. Edited by Sørina Higgins. Apocryphile Press, 2017. Paperback, 566 pages, $50. Reviewed by Ben Lockerd If a new scholarly...
The Loyal Gentleman
James V. Schall, S. J. “There is no substitute for strength of character, and in boys, or men, this requires two things increasingly rare in our time: knowledge of the past and a vision of the future. Of the former much has been written, and no compleat gentleman will...
Rescuing the Heroic Narrative
The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West by Michael Walsh. Encounter Books, 2018. Paperback, 231 pages, $26. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner The image of the fiery angel, as employed by Michael Walsh in his latest work, is...
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!