Leisure and the Lost Ascent
An essay on Josef Pieper’s “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” By Catherine Contonio. The modern world no longer recognizes the Greeks’ concept of leisure. The Greeks, in turn, would no longer recognize the modern notion of work, which has spread to cover the whole of...
William F. Buckley’s Cold War
The Fall of the Berlin Wall By William F. Buckley, Jr. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2004. Hardcover, 212 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by Michael Lucchese. As conservatives mark the centenary of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s birth, one of the most-celebrated aspects of his...
Climate Realism in an Alarmed Age
Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism Edited by E. Calvin Beisner and David R. Legates. Regnery Publishing, 2024. Hardcover, 480 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by Joshua J. Bowman. Calvin Beisner and David Legates’s edited volume, Climate and Energy, seeks to bring...
Bring Back the Virtues, Medieval Style
Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues and Vices for a Whole and Holy Life By Grace Hamman. Zondervan Academic, 2025. Hardcover, 224 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by Nadya Williams. A few years ago, my husband and I learned we were expecting a girl. As we were considering...
Is Religion Becoming Obsolete?
Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America By Christian Smith. Oxford University Press, 2025. Hardcover, 440 pages, $34.99. Reviewed by Phil Davignon. The question of whether religion is dying in the United States has long intrigued social...
Rachel Hadas’s Pastorals mirrors the house within its pages—static, but, like the windows, each one provides a different view each time it is read, depending on the changes in the seasons and the weather of the reader’s life. Pastorals invites you in, shows you around, tells a
Rediscovering the lost ideal of leisure is highly worthwhile regardless of whether we are headed for a world in which humans need not apply for most jobs. Tabachnick’s book is a fruitful and thought-provoking exploration of how we might realize this ideal. - Robert Rich on THE