A Circle of Instigators

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015. 644 pp., $35.00 cloth.Evelyn Waugh once complained that during the twentieth century, certain literary coteries had “ganged up and captured” an age’s...

The Start of the Division of Europe

After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe by Michael Jones. New American Library, 2015. Hardcover, pp. 374, $28. On 30 April 1945, when Russian troops were but four hundred yards away from his underground headquarters, Adolf Hitler killed himself. The...

A Lived, not ‘Living’ Constitution

The Constitution: An Introduction by Michael S. Paulsen and Luke Paulsen. Basic Books, 2015. Hardcover, 368 pages, $30.A wonderful initiation to the nation’s charter, The Constitution: An Introduction provides insights into not only the document itself, but the...

The Warrior for Free Government

Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government By Larry P. Arnn. Nelson Books, 2015. Hardcover, 376 pp., $23.Winston Churchill served fifty years in the British House of Commons, was Prime Minister twice, served in several British...

Creating in Community

Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings by Diana P. Glyer. Kent State University Press, 2015. Paperback, 224 pages, $19.There is no shortage of books on the authors who made up the best known writing group of the...

An Anti-Utopian Life

Isaiah Berlin: A Life, by Michael Ignatieff. New York: Owl Books, 1999. Paper, 356pp., $16. Isaiah Berlin, who died in 1997, was that rare man of letters who was also a man of the world. If Churchill was the statesman who earned laurels as an historian, Berlin was the...