A Plodding Penn

A Plodding Penn

William Penn: A Life Andrew R. Murphy Oxford University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 488 pages, $35. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson By the time William Penn (1644–1718) received his charter in 1681 from King Charles II for a new American colony he was already behind the times....
An Inherently Meaningful Cosmos

An Inherently Meaningful Cosmos

The Inklings and King Arthur: J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, & Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain. Edited by Sørina Higgins. Apocryphile Press, 2017. Paperback, 566 pages, $50. Reviewed by Ben Lockerd If a new scholarly...
Rescuing the Heroic Narrative

Rescuing the Heroic Narrative

The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West by Michael Walsh. Encounter Books, 2018. Paperback, 231 pages, $26. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner The image of the fiery angel, as employed by Michael Walsh in his latest work, is...
When Elites Were Elites

When Elites Were Elites

The Republic of Letters by Marc Fumaroli. Yale University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 382 pages, $30. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro The Republic of Letters is one of those fascinating history books that introduces an almost completely new element of analysis into already...
The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War By Joanne B. Freeman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Hardcover, 480 pages, $28. Reviewed by John Bicknell One could make the case that Yale professor Joanne Freeman is obsessed with people getting...
Confessions of a Jet-Set Conservative

Confessions of a Jet-Set Conservative

The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right by Max Boot. Liveright, 2018. Hardcover, 288 pages, $25. Reviewed by Ben Sixsmith Max Boot, like newspaper columnist Jennifer Rubin, once claimed to be a conservative critic of President Donald Trump, but has become...