Placing Chaucer
Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 624 pages, $40. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson We know so little about Shakespeare’s life. The facts could be put onto no more than a page. That has not prevented biographers from...
A Life in Liberal Internationalism
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer. Knopf, 2019. Hardcover, 608 pages, $30. Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa Richard Holbrooke’s life and career as a member of the American foreign policy establishment symbolized the decline...
The Revolution is Still Permanent
Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism by James Simpson. Belknap Press, 2019. Hardcover, 464 pages, $35. Reviewed by Micah Meadowcroft For those who can competently read it’s a regrettable feature of life that the interpolation of...
John Lukacs: Reactionary, Not Conservative
By John P. McCarthy On May 6th I received an email that historian John Lukacs had died at the age of ninety-five. Looking up, I was startled to notice twelve of his books on the bookshelf immediately behind my computer. Such was the measure of the man that I wanted to...
John Milton, Latin Love Poet
John Milton’s The Book of Elegies translated by A. M. Juster The Paideia Institute for Humanistic Study, Inc., 2019. Paperback, 135 pages, $15. Reviewed by Patrick Callahan As we are told Mount Helicon had two fonts of poetry, so we witness in recent years an...
Finding Wisdom at Dusk
The Unnamable Present by Roberto Calasso. Translated by Richard Dixon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 208 pages, $26. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp We’re living in strange times. There’s a pervasive sense of a cultural dusk, in many ways, in which...
Americans’ Dignity, and the Nation’s Shame
Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade. Sentinel, 2019. Hardcover, 304 pages, $30. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro It is an understatement to say that Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America, is an important book: it is a must-read. And the...
Fragments of Shattered Empire
Last Days in Old Europe: Trieste ’79, Vienna ’85, Prague ’89 By Richard Bassett. Allen Lane, 2019. Hardcover, 207 pages, $35. Reviewed by Kevin J. McNamara Empires demand histories as imperious as their subjects, but their aftermath, as this work by Richard Bassett...
More to Say on Slavery and the Constitution
No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding by Sean Wilentz. Harvard University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $27. Reviewed by Jason Ross The single most influential interpreter of the Convention that framed the Constitution is the...
This is good. I’d like to see a follow up piece on Wood’s The American Revolution and on Power & Liberty. Also, maybe some comment on the essay in The Idea of America that walks back the claim in Creation that 1789 marked the end of classical
Politics (the button interests and
“Anton’s book, and his entire worldview, stand as direct challenges to elite preferences and institutions: Okay, boomer, what next?”
Quite the review of Michael Anton's book from Brad Watson in @KirkCenter's @ubookman. https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/a-man-for-all-seasons/