Forgotten Name, Enduring Legacy

Founding Federalist: The Life of Oliver Ellsworth by Michael C. Toth (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011). 240 pages, $25. When American schoolchildren study the Constitutional Convention, they typically learn a few names—Madison, Randolph, Patterson, Washington—and few...

What was the Enlightenment?

A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy by Jonathan Israel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). Pages xiv, 276. “For what do we live,” Mr. Bennet asked his second daughter, having just read to her...

What’s the Supreme Court Supposed to Do?

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789–2008 by Lucas A Powe, Jr. Harvard University Press (Cambridge and London), 432 pages, paper $19.95, 2011. Sometime in 2012 the United States Supreme Court will issue its most important opinion in the twenty-first century...

Pressing On

This summer saw the passing of Otto von Habsburg, a living embodiment—perhaps the last such—of the European order swept away by the Great War. We have included a fitting tribute to the Archduke—whose son, Karl, studied with Russell Kirk as a Wilbur Fellow—by Denis...

Individual and Community—and God

The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion, and Culture by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009.This collection of essays by Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George brings the resources of the Catholic...

Ancient Virtues in a Postmodern World

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Twenty-First Century by Howard Gardner. Basic Books, 2011, 244 pp., $26. As author of Multiple Intelligences, Harvard professor Howard Gardner stands as perhaps the most celebrated, and misapplied,...