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...
Bruce P. Frohnen For decades, now, many among that ever-shrinking group of centrist and conservative academics have engaged in sometimes acrimonious debates over the sources and nature of our constitutional order. The debate centers on the question whether the United...
The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History by Alexander Mikaberidze. Oxford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 960 pages, $40. Reviewed by Casey Chalk Many, I’d imagine, would be intimidated by a 960-page book on the Napoleonic era. Or perhaps they’d be uninterested,...
Daniel Buck Most video games exist for crass entertainment. Others rise above with compelling storylines but remain pop-art at best. A rare few, however, boast the philosophical weight of a nineteenth-century Russian novel. Conservatives overlook this final category...
O’Connor, Updike, and the Literature of Self-Recrimination Michial Farmer The recent intra-literati arguments about Flannery O’Connor’s racism are, if nothing else, hard proof that ideas have consequences. Not long after the police killing of George Floyd ignited...
Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov Translated by Mirra Ginsburg. Grove Press, 1968. Paperback, 123 page, $16. By Katya Sedgwick In June, when Black Lives Matter riots erupted in American cities, conservatives began rereading Tom Wolfe for insides on race relations. I,...
And I Will Go to the Altar of God
Jesse Russell reviews "On the Altar: A History of Sacrifice from the Sacred to the Secular" by Jonathan Sheehan. @PrincetonUPress
