Antonin Scalia (1936–2016)
An era ended today with the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia, a 1960 magna cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School and a Notes Editor for the Harvard Law Review, taught for a while both at the University of Virginia and at the University of Chicago,...At Long Last
The Poems of T. S. Eliot, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 2 volumes, 1344 + 688 pages, $45/$40. When T. S. Eliot died in 1965, his writings were left in the care of his young widow, Valerie Eliot. She proved...The Courage of Lewis and Clark
Pedro Blas González Are these indeed men worthy of the name? Walt Whitman, “Democratic Vistas” The Journals of Lewis and Clark is a treasure of American history and exploration. It is also a testament to the strength of character of early American settlers. In 1803...Conservatism in Disarray
We are pleased to present a review of Brad Birzer’s important book, Russell Kirk: American Conservative, and we will have more to say on the book in the future. Conservatism is in disarray. I write this in the aftermath of the Iowa caucus which followed weeks of...The Multifaceted Kirk
Russell Kirk: American Conservative by Bradley J. Birzer. University Press of Kentucky, 2015. Hardcover, 608 pp., $35.On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered to Allied forces, officially ending World War II. While celebrations swept the United States, one strange young...Too Much Reality?
Amends: A Novel by Eve Tushnet. CreateSpace, 2015. Paper, 330 pages, $14.Eve Tushnet’s self-published debut novel Amends is at full gallop out of the gate: J. Malachi MacCool was born in Berkeley, California, in the last decade of the Cold War, to parents who deserved...A Circle of Instigators
The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015. 644 pp., $35.00 cloth.Evelyn Waugh once complained that during the twentieth century, certain literary coteries had “ganged up and captured” an age’s...The Start of the Division of Europe
After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe by Michael Jones. New American Library, 2015. Hardcover, pp. 374, $28. On 30 April 1945, when Russian troops were but four hundred yards away from his underground headquarters, Adolf Hitler killed himself. The...A Lived, not ‘Living’ Constitution
The Constitution: An Introduction by Michael S. Paulsen and Luke Paulsen. Basic Books, 2015. Hardcover, 368 pages, $30.A wonderful initiation to the nation’s charter, The Constitution: An Introduction provides insights into not only the document itself, but the...
I couldn't help but to think of some figures on X when I read this:
"Moreover, it is possible that Somer was, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet himself, both mad and acting mad—both a (semi-) natural fool as well as someone who constructed the exterior personality of a fool.
Jesse Russell…