Visions of Order

by | Sep 22, 2013

The Unwinding: an Inner History of the New America by George Packer. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013. Hardcover, 448 pages, $27.Liberal journalist George Packer has written a conservative book. At least, I found it to be conservative, at its core. In this “inner...

Can You Hear Me Now?

by | Sep 15, 2013

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Broadway/Random House, 2013. Paper, 368 pages, $16. In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain seeks to create a revolution, and after reading her...

Another Epitaph on American Exceptionalism

by | Sep 9, 2013

Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century by Patrick Smith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Hardcover, 231 pages, $27.50. This slender volume consists of four essays offering four variations on a single theme. Since “the American century is behind...

Characterizing the Two Britains

by | Aug 25, 2013

Sea Changes by Derek Turner. Washington Summit Publishers, 2012. Paperback, 456 pages, $23. “And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. In another second Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the...

Reading C. S. Lewis from the Inside Out

by | Aug 18, 2013

C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet by Alister McGrath. Tyndale, 2013. Hardcover, 488 pages, $24. Fifty years after his death, the Irish born but British bred scholar, apologist, and novelist C. S. Lewis remains incredibly popular in America, where...

Rushmore’s Odd Man Out

by | Jul 15, 2013

Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition by Jean M. Yarbrough. University of Kansas Press, 2012. Cloth, 337 pp., $40.Just what is the “American political tradition?” Better than sixty years ago the noted American historian, Richard Hofstadter, tried to...