The Never-Ending Threat of Utopia
The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin. Encounter Books, 2020. Hardcover, 288 pages, $29. Reviewed by Robert Grant Price Feudal times are here again. This is a thesis Joel Kotkin hammers to a fine point in The Coming of...
The President’s Hidden Hand
Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins by Annie Jacobsen. Back Bay Books, 2019. Paperback, 560 pages, $19. Reviewed by Michael J. Ard Is lethal covert action compatible with American democracy?...
An Ambitious Forgotten President
President Without a Party: The Life of John Tyler by Christopher J. Leahy. Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 512 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Brian Cervantez One cool February night in 1845, two weeks prior to the inauguration of recently elected...
Beha’s Capacity for God: Sophie Wilder Revisited
What Happened to Sophie Wilder: A Novel by Christopher R. Beha. Tin House Books, 2012. Paperback, 253 pages, $16. Reviewed by Joshua Hren In his new novel The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, Harper’s editor Christopher Beha makes grace a noisome concern, not least...
A Plutarchian Life of Brown and Lincoln
The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom by H. W. Brands. Doubleday, 2020. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson H. W. Brands has written perhaps his most fluent book, a constantly engaging study...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!