Mobocracy and the Founding

Mobocracy and the Founding

The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America By T. H. Breen. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 216 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jason Ross In the midst of a wave of populist revolutions upsetting global politics, Timothy...
It Will Mean What the Words Say!

It Will Mean What the Words Say!

The Essential Works of Thomas More Ed. by Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith. Yale University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 1520 pages, $100. Reviewed by Kenneth Craycraft Three scenes from A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt’s play about the elevation and martyrdom of...
The Arrogance of Blueprints

The Arrogance of Blueprints

A conversation with Amity Shlaes The Bookman is pleased to speak with Amity Shlaes about her new book Great Society: A New History. Amity Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, and is the author of six books, including four New York...
Sources for Rebuilding

Sources for Rebuilding

A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream by Yuval Levin. Basic Books, 2020. Hardcover, 256 pages, $28. By Anthony M. Barr “When they were filled, he said unto his...
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...