Writer as Goad
Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures by Adina Hoffman. Yale University Press, 2019 Hardcover, 264 pages, $26. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson Ben Hecht is one of those American writers who seems to have had a hand in everything. He was a Chicago newspaperman who also...
Thucydides’s Challenge
How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy by Thucydides, edited by Johanna Hanink. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 336 pages, $17. Reviewed by Nick Burns If pulled from his grave near the base of the Pnyx Hill, unceremoniously revivified,...
An Historian’s Evolving Vision of Mankind
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Spiegel and Grau, 2018. Hardcover, 400 pages, $28. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Yuval Noah Harari is a brilliant historian teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His 2015 bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History...
Through the Lens of Civil Society
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney. Harper, 2019. Hardcover, 368 pages, $28. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro Alienated America, by Washington Examiner editor and journalist Tim Carney, is the latest and most expansive...
Things Strange and Admirable
Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings by Tom Shippey. Reaktion Books, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $30. Reviewed by Timothy D. Lusch It is a mark of our Age of Sensitivity that scholars have tried to turn the murderous Vikings into hygge-loving...
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!