The New Storytelling, From Tocqueville to Fortnite
By Titus Techera Computer games are the least discussed of our massive entertainment industries. Gaming is uniquely dominated by men and newest among our forms of entertainment, so the suspicion that it owes its success to its criticism of our society is still fresh....
Prophets of Paradise?
Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations by Nicholas Carr. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016. Hardcover, 360 pages, $15. Reviewed by Jacob Bruggeman Historians and science fiction writers, philosophers and some politicians, have for decades warned us of the...
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,...
My summer reading: @NBlakeEPPC's Victims of the Revolution, @AmericanGwyn's The Cannibal Owl (read @danielcowper's review https://bit.ly/3G0EOIb), Kent Haruf's Plainsong, and more.
https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/editors-summer-reading-2/
What will @lsheahan, @DavidGBonaguraJ, Isabel Dobbs and @darrellfalconbu of @ubookman be reading this summer? Check out the post below.