Coming to Terms with Sherman
Gates of Heaven: A Novel By Glenn Arbery. Wiseblood Books, 2025. Paperback, 554 pages, $20. Reviewed by Chilton Williamson, Jr. Gates of Heaven is Glenn Arbery’s third novel; it is also the last in a trilogy that, reckoning by the publication dates, was a labor that...
Solzhenitsyn and the Spirituality of Self-Limitation
We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Edited by Ignat Solzhenitsyn. University of Notre Dame Press, 2025. Hardcover, 228 pages, $28. Reviewed by William Scott. The eighth title to appear in Notre Dame Press’s “Center for...
How Should We Think About Inequality?
Why Democracy Needs the Rich By John O. McGinnis. Encounter Books, 2026. Hardcover, 280 pages, $32.99. Reviewed by Michael Munger. Hostility toward wealth is not an American value. But that has changed in the past 15 years, with a culturally salient event being Barack...
Enchanting Criticism: Dana Gioia as Literary Critic
Poetry as Enchantment: And Other Essays By Dana Gioia. Paul Dry Books, 2024. Paperback, 272 pages, $21.95. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey. In his essay titled “Reading,” W. H. Auden sets forth what he views as the special duties of the literary critic: What is the function...
The Machine or the Garden?
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity By Paul Kingsnorth. Thesis/Penguin Random House, 2025. Hardcover, 368 pages, $32. Reviewed by Paul Krause. In the beginning was the garden. That is a very standard myth to start. Many cultures have foundation myths that...
"The first question, and perhaps the most pressing one when reviewing a book by @McCormickProf, is this: Even in the comparatively small world of intellectual conservatism, is there anything George isn’t doing?" - R. McKay Stangler in @ubookman
"Nonetheless, admittedly indirect evidence has been put forth, evidence which at least suggests that Hoover might have been inadvertently onto something when he successfully proposed replacing the notion of a relatively quick “panic” with something more drawn out, maybe even