That Sacred Canopy
The Free Speech Century by Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone. Oxford University Press, 2019. Paperback, 376 pages, $21.95. Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl In the final chapter to Lee Bollinger’s and Geoffrey R. Stone’s The Free Speech Century, the editors pose a...
Bair, Beauvoir, and the Becketeers
Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir by Deidre Bair. Nan A. Talese, 2019. Hardcover, 368 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Michial Farmer When she set out to write her award-winning biography of Samuel Beckett, Deirdre Bair had never even read...
Poets of Brutality and Redemption
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays by Wendell Berry. Counterpoint [1993], 2018. Paperback, 208 pages, $18. Reviewed by Marlo Safi Today, brutality abounds. In its countless iterations, whether the brutality toward the unborn; the poor and...
Fly-Fishing and the Constitution
A Republic, If You Can Keep It by Neil Gorsuch with Jane Nitze and David Feder. Crown Forum, 2019. Cloth, 352 pages, $30. Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser More than two centuries ago, Samuel Johnson made the point that there were some things that were remarkable not...
Saint Louis and the Convert Immigrants
The Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX by William Chester Jordan. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 200 pages, $35. Reviewed by James Baresel My suspicions are that barely a minority of well-read conservatives with an avid but...
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!