Citizens of the World
The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna. Naval Institute Press, [1962] 2001. Paper, 624 pages, $26. Reviewed by Casey Chalk This October marked the one-year anniversary of the release of Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle, an American/Canadian couple captured by the Taliban...
The Revolution That Did Not End in Blood
A Conversation with Antonia Fraser Interviewed by JP O’Malley Antonia Fraser is the author of many acclaimed and bestselling novels and historical works, including Mary Queen of Scots; Cromwell, Our Chief of Men; and The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605. She...
Christian Martyrs in the First Islamic States
Christian Martyrs Under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World by Christian C. Sahner. Princeton University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 360 pages, $39. Reviewed by Jane Peters On February 15, 2018 in the village of al-Our, the Coptic Orthodox Church...
His Old Kentucky Home
Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President by James C. Klotter. Oxford University Press, 2018. Hardcover, xix + 506 pages, $35. Reviewed by Miles Smith When Abraham Lincoln called Henry Clay his beau ideal of a statesmen in the 1840s, he echoed respectable businessmen...
Orpheus Britannicus
A New English Music: Composers and Folk Traditions in England’s Musical Renaissance from the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century by Tim Rayborn. McFarland & Co., 2016. Paperback, 312 pages, $40. Reviewed by R. J. Stove When I come to England, I don’t claim...
Percy and the Persistence of Alienation
Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer by Brian A. Smith. Lexington Books, 2017. Hardcover, 195 pages, $91. Reviewed by Emina Melonic By nature, we are restless and distracted beings. Feeling empty, isolated, disconnected, and unhappy is nothing new. Even early...
When Democracy Came, It Came in a Flurry
The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson By Mark R. Cheathem. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. Paperback, 248 pages, $25. Reviewed by John Bicknell “I have been charmed to see that a presidential election now produces scarcely any...
A Desire to Win Well
American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals During the Revolutionary Era by Craig Bruce Smith. University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Hardcover, 384 pages, $35. Reviewed by Daniel N. Gullotta Recent historians have found little honorable about the American...
Your Political Opponent Might Be Human
The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis by Martha Nussbaum. Simon & Schuster, 2018. Hardcover, 249 pages, $17. Reviewed by Anthony M. Barr In the preface to her recent book The Monarchy of Fear, philosopher Martha Nussbaum observes that...
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!