Unlikely Centers of Cultural Change
Coffeehouse Culture in the Atlantic World, 1650-1789 by E. Wesley Reynolds III. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Cloth, 264 pages, $115.00. Reviewed by James E. Person Jr. Near the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson famously referred to coffee as “the favorite drink of the...
Higher Law and Public Order: Martin Luther King Jr. and Charles Frankel on Civil Disobedience
By Ben Peterson At least since Sophocles’ dramatic telling of the bitter conflict between Antigone and Creon over the burial of Antigone’s traitorous brother, the tension between higher law and the benefits of a public order that promotes law abidingness has been...
Found in Translation: Capturing the Sublime with Ryan Wilson
Proteus Bound: Selected Translations, 2008-2020 By Ryan Wilson. Franciscan University Press, 2021. Paper, 224 pages, $15.00. Reviewed by Patrick Callahan. Ryan Wilson’s new collection of verse translations, Proteus Bound, dazzles when you try to grasp it. The whole...
The Mysterious Being in the Ring
In the House of Tom Bombadil C.R. Wiley. Canon Press, 2021. Paper, 128 pages, $16.95. Reviewed by Nathanael Blake. Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, but what is the point of him? He is one of the most enigmatic characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,...
Forgotten No More—Remembering M. Stanton Evans
M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom By Steven F. Hayward. Encounter Books, 2022. Hardcover, 400 pages, $33.99. Reviewed by James A. Davenport. Recently, I found myself working through a document that mentioned the name M. Stanton Evans. A colleague...
For America250, @lsheahan enters the fray:
What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom
A "revolution not made, but prevented.” Russell Kirk fondly and frequently quoted E. J. Payne’s pithy summary of Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution.
"So yes, Lord Alfred, perhaps you are right after all. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world! Perhaps one last Ulyssean adventure remains beyond the sunset, and perhaps some work of noble note may yet be done."