The Power Has Flowed Away
Serotonin: A Novelby Michel Houellebecq. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 320 pages, $27. Reviewed by Zak Slayback “Did we yield to the illusion of individual freedom, of an open life, of infinite possibilities? It’s possible,” Michel Houellebecq’s...
Hope for a Rebirth of Common Sense in the Academy?
Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right Edited by Lee Trepanier and Grant Havers. Lexington Books, Political Theory for Today Series, 2019. Cloth, 202 pages, $95. Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser There’s a famous aphorism often wrongly attributed to Oscar Wilde,...
Lessons from a Forgotten Papacy
The Pearl of Great Price: Pius VI & the Sack of Rome by Christian Browne. Arouca Press, 2020 Paperback, 146 pages, $16.95 Review by David G. Bonagura, Jr. American knowledge of the Roman Catholic papacy does not run deep. It begins in the fifth century with Pope...
The Substance of Style
Farnsworth’s Classical English Style by Ward Farnsworth. David R. Godine, 2020 Hardcover, 145 pages, $27.95 Reviewed by Cory L. Andrews Bad and lazy writing, George Orwell famously insisted, betrays bad and lazy thinking. It also burdens and alienates the reader, who...
Defending the Right and the Good
Russell Kirk and The University Bookman By George H. Nash In an interview late in his career, Russell Kirk told a story about a “forgotten mill pond” in the village of Mecosta, Michigan. Since boyhood, he recalled, he had enjoyed tossing pebbles into this pond and...
Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.