Enlightening the Masses

Enlightening the Masses

The Enlightenment That Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748–1830 by Jonathan I. Israel. Oxford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 942 pages, $45. Reviewed by Luke Nicastro To commemorate the second anniversary of the Bastille’s seizure, in July of...
A Quarantine Reading Journal

A Quarantine Reading Journal

Eric Hutchinson Charles Portis, Norwood Arkansas’s Charles Portis, most famous as the author of True Grit, died on February 17. Also in February, COVID-19 was spreading around the world. Of these two facts, the first calls for memorialization. The second calls for...
What Lasch Knew

What Lasch Knew

The Topeka School: A Novel by Ben Lerner. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 304 pages, $27. Reviewed by Jon K. Lauck Ben Lerner has written an intense new novel that will mark our cultural moment for some time, even in these strange days, but in ways that,...
Nietzsche’s Puritan Warriors

Nietzsche’s Puritan Warriors

Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That Spawned America’s Social Justice Warriors by Mark T. Mitchell. Regnery Gateway, 2020. Hardcover, 148 pages, $27. Reviewed by John Ehrett It is unfortunate that Mark T. Mitchell’s Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That...
Yes It’s Poetry, But Is It Good?

Yes It’s Poetry, But Is It Good?

The Soul is a Stranger in this World: Essays on Poets and Poetry By Micah Mattix. Cascade Books, 2020. Softcover, 164 pages, $21. Reviewed by Karl C. Schaffenburg Lovers of poetry will find much to enjoy in this volume, which collects short essays written by the...
Skiing Alta with WFB

Skiing Alta with WFB

William F. Meehan III ‘Alta’ isn’t a word you hear often in fashionable conversations in skiing circles … You can live out a casual lifetime, as a casual skier, and not know about Alta, and the odd thing is that this really suits the Alta people just fine. There is...