Defending Against the Old Chaos
The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire by A. Wess Mitchell. Princeton University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 416 pages, $35. Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa Between 1700 and 1866, the Austrian Habsburgs skillfully navigated the great power politics of Europe, withstanding...
Not Enough Argument
Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World by Samuel Moyn. Belknap Press, 2018. Hardcover, 264 pages, $30. Reviewed by Oliver Traldi In 1971, the analytically minded linguist Noam Chomsky debated the postmodern theorist Michel Foucault. Both leftists, they...
Eleven New Ghostly Tales
Lady Stanhope’s Manuscript and Other Stories by Dale Nelson. Nodens Books, 2017. Paperback, 206 pages, $16. Reviewed by Robert Grano In Russell Kirk’s essay “A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale” he quotes ghost story writer Gerald Heard as once telling him that “the...
Sandel in China
Encountering China: Michael Sandel and Chinese Philosophy Michael J. Sandel and Paul J. D’Ambrosio. Harvard University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 320 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jason Morgan During the twentieth century, liberals such as John Rawls, Friedrich Hayek, Milton...
Making Silly People Uncomfortable
A conversation with acclaimed philosopher John Gray. JP O’Malley John Gray is an English political philosopher whose major books include Straw Dogs, Black Mass, and The Silence of Animals. Gray’s latest book is called Seven Types of Atheism. Where did the title of...
Caddyshack and the Counterculture Takeover of American Humor
Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story by Chris Nashawaty. Flatiron books, 2018. Hardcover, 304 pages, $27. Reviewed by Mark Judge When I was in college in the 1980s in I worked at a movie theater in Maryland, the Bethesda Cinema ’n’ Drafthouse. The...
Permanent Like Achilles
Reviewed by Patrick J. Burns Why Bob Dylan Matters by Richard F. Thomas. HarperCollins Publishers, 2017. Hardcover, 368 pages, $25. Bob Dylan took Latin. I didn’t know this before reading Why Bob Dylan Matters, an insightful reflection on Dylan’s investment and,...
The (Mis)measure of Man
The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller. Princeton University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 220 pages, $25. Reviewed by Gene Callahan One way of defining “rationalism” (when the term is understood as a flaw rather than a virtue) is that it is the attempt to replace...
Athwart Silicon Valley
Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials by Matthew Hennessey. Encounter Books, 2018. Hardcover, 184 pages, $24. Reviewed by Matthew Stokes There’s a phrase once heard in television commercials and now common on social...
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!