Can the United States Have a Good History?
The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900 By Jon K. Lauck. University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. Paperback, 366 pages, $26.95. Reviewed by Daniel J. Fischer. Historians have a complicated job. Their ultimate aim should be to use the available...
Yuval Levin’s Stirring Defense of the Constitution
American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again By Yuval Levin. Basic Books, 2024. Hardcover, 352 pages, $32. Reviewed by Michael Lucchese. Something has gone wrong with America. Even among the politically disengaged, one can detect a...
“Putting Civil Back in Civilization”
The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves By Alexandra Hudson. St. Martin’s Press, 2023. Hardcover, 416 pages, $29. Reviewed by Henry T. Edmondson III. Speech codes, safe spaces, and intolerant demands for diversity, equity, and inclusion...
Here’s Why Not
How Should We Then Die?: A Christian Response to Physician-Assisted Death By Ewan C. Goligher, MD. Lexham Press, 2024. Paperback, 160 pages, $ 18.99. Reviewed by Robert Grant Price. Why not let patients determine whether to die at the hand of a physician? Ewan...
Gentlemen Losers
Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan By Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMay. University of Texas Press, 2023. Hardcover, 280 pages, $35. Reviewed by Asher Gelzer-Govatos. Steely Dan, those infamously reclusive...
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…