A District in Play
Spitalfields: The History of a Nation in a Handful of Streets by Dan Cruickshank. Random House, (2016) 2018. Paperback, 763 pages, $24 Reviewed by Derek Turner Every morning, I would be awakened by the cockerel across the road, and open the curtains to see an array of...
The Doctor as Moralist
The Proper Procedure and Other Stories by Theodore Dalrymple. New English Review Press, 2017. Paperback, 162 pages, $19. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp The phenomenon of the literary doctor presents an interesting case in reading biography into a literary oeuvre. They...
The Doctor as Amoralist
Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations by Arnold van de Laar, translated by Andy Brown. St. Martin’s Press, 2018. Hardcover, 357 pages, $30. Reviewed by Karl C. Schaffenburg In his entertaining and readable review of the history of surgery,...
Dropouts from a Mercenary Society
The Bump on Brannigan’s Head by Myles Connolly with an introduction and notes by Stephen Mirarchi. Cluny Media, (1950) 2018. Paperback, 252 pages, $18. Dan England and the Noonday Devil Myles Connolly, with an introduction and notes by Stephen Mirarchi. Cluny Media,...
An Artist in History
A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley. by Jane Kamensky. W.W. Norton and Company, 2017. Hardcover, 544 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by James Baresel Much as honesty forces the admission that they are not of equal aesthetic quality, the works of John...
Rethinking Hollywood History
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Annapurna Pictures, 2018. Reviewed by Titus Techera The most interesting thing on Netflix now is the new Coen Brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Western in six episodes, starting with...
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...
“The Last God’s Dream,” while certainly among the more daring of Kirk’s “experiments in the moral imagination”(as he described his literary efforts), is also one of the more successful at blending the author’s varied interests in politics, history, literature, and metaphysics.
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