E. J. Hutchinson What is literature for? Any number of things, one supposes—pleasure, say, or escape. But does it do anything else? In a frequently used and even more frequently misunderstood phrase, Auden says that “poetry makes nothing happen.”[1] But what if...
Dan Whitehead “[I]t would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and...
Bradbury Beyond Apollo by Jonathan R. Eller. University of Illinois Press, 2020. Hardcover, 336 pages. $35. Reviewed by James E. Person Jr. Anyone who considers the life and career of Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) is eventually struck by a remarkable fact: although the...
The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin. Encounter Books, 2020. Hardcover, 288 pages, $29. Reviewed by Casey Chalk Perhaps one of the great cons of the twenty-first century has been corporate America’s success in deceiving...
Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins by Annie Jacobsen. Back Bay Books, 2019. Paperback, 560 pages, $19. Reviewed by Michael J. Ard Is lethal covert action compatible with American democracy?...
The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom by H. W. Brands. Doubleday, 2020. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson H. W. Brands has written perhaps his most fluent book, a constantly engaging study...
