The Fessio Phenomenon
Father Joseph Fessio, S.J.: California Blackrobe By Cornelius Michael Buckley. S.J. Ignatius Press, 2024. Hardcover, 379 pages, $27.95. Reviewed by Lee Oser. “Fessio.” The name has become a test. The first card the reviewer lays on the table will evoke a smile or a...
Transmitting Western Civilization Through Education
On Being Civilized: A Few Lines Amid the Breakage By Tracy Lee Simmons. Memoria College Press, 2023. Paperback, 281 pages, $15.45. Reviewed by Darrell Falconburg. “What is civilization?” When confronted with what appears to be civilizational disintegration, many...
The Divine Inspiration of Handel’s Messiah
Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah By Charles King. Doubleday, 2024. Hardcover, 352 pages, $32.00. Reviewed by Rev. Dr. Karl C. Schaffenburg. Joyeuses Fêtes! as a seasonal greeting is no more silly than “Happy Holidays!”,...
Buckley at 100: At Sea with William F. Buckley Jr.
Airborne: A Sentimental Journey (1976) Atlantic High: A Celebration (1982) Racing Through Paradise: A Pacific Passage (1987) WindFall: The End of the Affair (1992) Reviewed by Bill Meehan. William F. Buckley Jr., a friend of Russell Kirk, circulated The University...
Roadmap for Downsizing the Administrative State
American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism By Ned Ryun. Encounter Books, 2024. Paperback, 176 pages, $19.99. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks. In American Leviathan, Ned Ryun offers a cogent overview of the origins,...
The book’s defense of McCarthyism also fares even better over half a century after its publication, as the opening of the Soviet archives gave Americans far more information than the authors had in 1954 and made abundantly clear not only the reality of Soviet infiltration of the…
Today, we know so much more about the communist infiltration of our government and society in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s than William F. Buckley, Jr. did in his early career. Yet, it turns out that Buckley and his allies were closer to the truth about domestic communism than their…