A Marvelous Tale

by | Aug 3, 2014

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin, 2014. Hardcover, 448 pages, $28. J. R. R. Tolkien’s newly published translation of Beowulf will be of interest to two overlapping groups: on the one hand,...

Progressives and the Booboisie

by | Jul 27, 2014

The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class by Fred Siegel. Encounter Books, 2014. Hardcover, 240 pages, $24.What do H. L. Mencken and Barack Obama have in common? Not much, it would seem. The sage of Baltimore was skeptical of all...

Books in Little

by | Jul 27, 2014

The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government by Philip K. Howard. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. 257 pages, $24. It is obvious that the current system of government is failing—higher expenses, increased waste, and little (if any)...

Elizabeth Lambert

by | Jul 23, 2014

Elizabeth Lambert is Emerita Professor of English, Gettysburg College. She has published reviews and articles on various aspects of Burke’s life and thought, his religion, his friendship with Samuel Johnson, and the ways James Boswell’s portrayal of Burke in the Life...

Steven Millies

by | Jul 23, 2014

Steven P. Millies is associate professor of political science at the University of South Carolina Aiken in Aiken, SC. He studied at The Catholic University of America, where he wrote on religion in Burke’s political thought. Today, he writes both about conservatism...

Michael Brown

by | Jul 23, 2014

Dr. Michael Brown holds a Chair in Irish, Scottish and Enlightenment History at the University of Aberdeen where he is also acting director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. The author of biographical studies of Francis Hutcheson and John...

American Religious Freedom: The Revised Story

by | Jul 21, 2014

The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom by Steven D. Smith. Harvard University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 240 pages, $40. In legal scholarship, as in any literature, style matters as much as content. The subjects authors explore, their manners and patterns of...

The Humanistic Tradition in Literature

by | Jul 21, 2014

Literary Criticism from Plato to Postmodernism: The Humanistic Alternative by James Seaton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 225 pages, $90.Back when I was a pimple-faced graduate student in English and law, I ordered a book from Amazon titled...

How Progressive Is Berlin?

by | Jul 15, 2014

Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom edited by Bruce Baum and Robert Nichols. Routledge, 2013. Hardcover, 284 pages, $130. Among Anglophone political theorists who lived in the twentieth century, Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) stood out for the breadth of his...

The Real Great Depression?

by | Jul 13, 2014

The Forgotten Man, Graphic Edition: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. Harper Perennial, 2014. Paperback, 320 pages, $20.Amity Shlaes does not believe in playing it safe. In 2007 she issued the original edition of The Forgotten Man: A New History...