It’s About the Music

by | Feb 13, 2012

Exploring U2: Is This Rock ’n’ Roll? by Scott Calhoun (ed.), Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012, 276 pp., hardcover, $60. Music is better heard than described. So the Scott Calhoun-edited Exploring U2: Is This Rock ’n’ Roll? naturally suffers from handicaps in a way...

On the Matter of Authentic Conservatism and Political Faith

by | Jan 30, 2012

From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism. By D. G. Hart. Eerdmans, 2011. 237 pages. $25. With this book and his earlier A Secular Faith, Daryl Hart has put his force of persuasion strongly behind the idea of a secular...

Contingent Conservatism

by | Jan 22, 2012

The New Politics: Liberal Conservatism or Same Old Tories? by Peter King, Policy Press (Bristol UK), 2011, 156pp, paper, $35. Peter King of De Montfort University is a Conservative-supporting academic who has advised the government on welfare reform. He is besides the...

The Empire Goes Overboard

by | Jan 15, 2012

Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America by Benjamin L. Carp, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, Cloth, 328 pp, $30 Boston had had enough. After a merchant ship refused to return to England with its controversial tea cargo, John...

Political Correctness and the War Against Authority

by | Jan 8, 2012

Society Against Itself: Political Correctness and Organizational Self-Destruction by Howard S. Schwartz, Karnac Books, 2010. Paper, 240 pp. The congeries of ideological positions known as “political correctness” has long posed a threat to Western civilization. As an...

Celebrated Minor Contemporary American Poetry

by | Dec 28, 2011

The Best American Poetry 2011 Edited by Kevin Young with David Lehman Scribner (New York, NY), 2011, xxvi + 211 pp., $35.00 Consider the following—“Rally”—the first poem in this year’s annual Best American Poetry series, reproduced in its entirety: The awesome weight...