Holding a Wolf by the Ears
Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution by Jeff Broadwater. University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Hardcover, 296 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jason Ross No friendship in American history has been as consequential as that between Thomas Jefferson and...
A Life for the Longfellow Renaissance
Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas A. Basbanes. Knopf, 2020. Hardcover, 461 pages, $37.50. Reviewed by William F. Meehan III Henry Wadsworth Longfellow faded so far into American cultural memory that it is easy to forget he was the...
Woodward, Reconstruction, and Their Legacy
The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward Edited by Natalie J. Ring and Sarah E. Gardner. Oxford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 288 Pages, $35. Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser The great intractable American social problem is race. There is, undeniably, a vast...
Tolkien’s Yuletide Fiction
Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien Houghton Mifflin Company, 2020. Hardcover, 208 pages, $28. Reviewed by John Tuttle The name Tolkien is first and foremost associated with what is widely acknowledged as the man’s chief literary creation, The...
The Risks of Levity
Milan Kundera, Ambiguous Prophet Trevor C. Merrill “Those no longer able to see reality with their own eyes are equally unable to hear correctly,” writes Josef Pieper. “It is specifically the man thus impoverished who inevitably falls prey to the demagogical spells of...
Ah, just your typical 663-page light summer beach read for a @ubookman book review. Makes Wealth of Nations look like a Substack essay.