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...

Kissinger as Political Philosopher

Kissinger 1923–1968: The Idealist by Niall Ferguson. New York: Penguin Press, 2015. Hardcover, 986 pp., $39.95. Henry Kissinger has been called many things in his long, eventful public career, but “idealist” is not one of them. Until now. The first volume of the...

Pierre Manent’s Common Political Science

Seeing Things Politically: Interviews with Benedicte Delorme-Montini by Pierre Manent. St. Augustine’s Press, 2015. Hardcover, 240 pages, $30.   “Thomists have moralized and depoliticized Aristotle,” French Catholic philosopher Pierre Manent charges in his book,...