Our Lives in the Panopticon
The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control Jacob Siegel. Henry Holt and Co., 2026. Hardcover, 336 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by Albert Norton, Jr. Just within the last year, Paul Kingsnorth published Against The Machine about the source of our increasing...
Plan a Visit Soon
Pastorals By Rachel Hadas. Measure Press, 2025. Hardcover, 88 pages, $25. Reviewed by Midge Goldberg. What are Rachel Hadas’s pastorals? Not poems, not essays, not quite prose poems. What they really feel like are “visits.” You go to a friend’s house, sit down in the...
Preparing for Leisure
The Leisure Ethic: The End of Work and a Return to Virtue By David Edward Tabachnick. Toronto University Press, 2026. Paperback, 288 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Robert Rich. In August of 2014, the science educator and YouTuber CGP Grey made the case, in a video titled...
Michigan’s Neglected Civil War Governor
Radical of Radicals: Austin Blair—Civil War Governor—In His Own Words By Jack Dempsey. Mission Point Press, 2025. Paperback, 360 pages, $18.95. Reviewed by Miles Smith IV. In every intelligent history of the Civil War Era, the major players show up on stage, right on...
The Enduring Sources of the Permanent Things
What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family By Timothy S. Goeglein with Craig Osten. Fidelis Publishing, 2026. Hardcover, 264 pages, $28.00. Reviewed by Cory Andrews. In an age when so many of our inherited institutions seem to be unraveling...
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