Why We Need Beauty

Why We Need Beauty

A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art By Michael B. Gill.  Princeton University Press, 2022. Hardcover, 248 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Lee Trepanier. Now neglected in the Western canon, Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions,...
What Makes a Classic?

What Makes a Classic?

Wit’s Treasury: Renaissance England and the Classics  By Stephen Orgel. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Hardcover,  216 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by John Tuttle. What is a classic? It’s a provocative question for the literary-bent mind. Just what...
Where Is Home?

Where Is Home?

A Song to Keep: A Kinship of Poems and Drawings  By Olivia Findlay and Domenica de Ferranti. Scotland Street Press, 2021. Hardcover, 112 pages, $35. Reviewed by Ashlee Cowles. One of the most prominent and compelling themes in literature, including poetry, is the...
Russell Kirk vs. Fusionism: A Conflict in Name Only?

Russell Kirk vs. Fusionism: A Conflict in Name Only?

By Jason Jewell. This essay is based on remarks delivered at NatCon3 in Miami in September 2022. Fusionism, the strategy to form an alliance between political conservatives and libertarians during the Cold War, was hotly debated among primary figures in the movement...
Restoring the True and the Beautiful

Restoring the True and the Beautiful

The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England’s Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus By Andrew Klavan. Zondervan Books, 2022. Hardcover, 272 pages, $26.99. Reviewed by Emeline McClellan. English prose has entered a...
Nihilism as Public Policy

Nihilism as Public Policy

Interventions 2020 By Michel Houellebecq. Translated by Andrew Brown. Polity Press, 2022. Hardcover, 314 pages, $25.00. Reviewed by Pedro Blas González. What makes Michel Houellebecq a singular writer for today is his understanding of postmodern man’s existential...