Psychedelic Utopia
Outside Looking In: A Novel by T. C. Boyle Ecco, 2019. Hardcover, 400 pages, $28. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp “Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person’s expense!” —Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance It isn’t too much of a...
The Six Communal Institutions and the Modern Economy
Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth. Atlantic Books, 2019. paperback, 288 pages, $16. By Gerard T. Mundy Communal institutions keep the classical liberal–free market state from implosion. As the strength of what this essay identifies...
Fault Lines in American Identity
Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies by Paul A. Cantor University Press of Kentucky, 2019. Hardcover, 224 pages, $40. Reviewed by Harrison F. Dietzman Anna Sorokin, an émigré fashion student of modest means,...
Baseball, Out of Time?
Why Baseball Matters By Susan Jacoby. Yale University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 224 pages, $26. Reviewed by Caden McCann Baseball remains one of the most profitable sports franchises in the country, trailing just behind football and basketball. In Why Baseball Matters,...
The Loyalist Arguments
God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case against the American Revolution by Gregg L. Frazer. University Press of Kansas, 2018. Hardcover, 320 pages, $35. Reviewed by William Anthony Hay Historians over recent decades have put considerable effort...
Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.