Persuasion in the Age of Twitter
How to Win an Argument: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Persuasion by Marcus Tullius Cicero, translated and edited by James M. May. Princeton University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 288 pages, $17. Reviewed by David G. Bonagura, Jr. It is no secret that American public...
Two Cheers for Ultramontanism
Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church by John W. O’Malley. Harvard University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 295 pages, $25. Reviewed by Tyler Dobbs After many long centuries, the papacy had finally met its end. No, we are not talking about the...
The Scientific Case for an Alarming Utopia
Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker. Viking, 2018. Hardcover, 556 pages. $35. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Steven Pinker’s writing is intriguing. Just about everything he says is half right and half wrong. In this and...
David Bowie and the Decade Science Fiction Took Off
Strange Stars: How Science Fiction and Fantasy Transformed Popular Music by Jason Heller. Melville House, 2018. Hardcover, 272 pages, $27. Reviewed by Mark Judge In 1980, musician David Bowie released a new album, Scary Monsters. On the record was a song called “Ashes...
He Knew the Reason We Fight
Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia L. Haven. Michigan State University Press, 2018. Paperback, 346 pages, $30. Reviewed by Patrick Kurp In their 1941 short feature In the Sweet Pie and Pie, Larry, Curly, and Moe are ex-cons hoping to marry three...
This Is Not How We Got Here
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder. Tim Duggan Books, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $27. Reviewed by Sumantra Maitra How did we end up here? Yale scholar and historian, Professor Timothy Snyder’s latest book attempts to explore the issues...
The Neighborliness Not Taken
Won’t You Be My Neighbor directed by Morgan Neville. Tremolo Productions, 2018. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes. By Ryan Shinkel The neighborhood could have never been that friendly. There must have been scars or tattoos underneath all his sweaters, my fellow...
Pharisees and Neocolonialists
Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century by Obianuju Ekeocha. Ignatius Press, 2018. Paperback, 225 pages, $17. Reviewed by Casey Chalk In one of the final scenes of the 2006 film Last King of Scotland, infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin...
The Artist and His Epoch
David Jones on Religion, Politics, and Culture: Unpublished Prose ed. Thomas Berenato, Anne Price-Owen, and Kathleen Henderson Staudt. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Cloth, xviii + 347 pages, $176. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz David Jones (1895–1974) is acknowledged...
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!