Reflections on the Fundamental Law

by | Jan 27, 2013

The Conservative Constitution, by Russell Kirk. Regnery Gateway, 1990. Hardcover, 241 pp., $22.95 (as reviewed). Revised and expanded as Rights and Duties, with an introduction by Russell Hittinger (Spence, 1997).I first came across Russell Kirk’s writing forty-two...

The Persistence of History

by | Jan 21, 2013

After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy by Chilton Williamson, Jr. ISI Books, 2012 Hardcover, 288 pages, $28Twenty years ago, as the Cold War ended with the triumph of the West over Communism, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the “end of history,” by which...

A Blinkered Life of Burke

by | Jan 21, 2013

The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke, by Conor Cruise O’Brien. University of Chicago Press, 1992.Paper 692 pp., $34.95. Conor Cruise O’Brien had a distinguished career before writing this book. He served in Ireland’s...

Testing the Metaphor

by | Jan 13, 2013

Extreme Metaphors: Selected Interviews with J. G. Ballard, 1967–2008, Edited by Simon Sellars and Dan O’Hara. Fourth Estate, 2012. Hardcover, 304 pages, £25.In the program Frost on Interviews, recently rebroadcast on British television, the distinguished...

Burke Endures

by | Jan 13, 2013

The Enduring Edmund Burke, edited by Ian Crowe. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997. 221pp., $25 cloth.1997 marked the bicentenary of Edmund Burke’s death, the perfect occasion to measure the enduring relevance of his thought. What endures, amply evident from this...

Bloodied Beauty

by | Jan 6, 2013

The Poetics of Evil: Toward an Aesthetic Theodicy by Philip Tallon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Cloth, 266 pages, $74.While preparing an anthology, I once spent several months researching the “problem of evil.” I remember learning about genocides. Not...

True Ethical Humanism

by | Jan 6, 2013

Rousseau and Romanticism, by Irving Babbitt. With a new Introduction by Claes G. Ryn. Transaction Publishers, 1991. This reprint of the best-known work by Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) is a sturdy addition to Transaction’s Library of Conservative Thought. When it was...

Looking Forward and Back

by | Jan 1, 2013

The Bookman has had a banner 2012! This past year, we have seen all forms of our traffic increase, and we published in 2012 over sixty new reviews and articles, with weekly selections from our incomparable archives. Some highlights from the past year include our...

A Player Piano for the Twenty-First Century

by | Dec 31, 2012

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Dial Press 1999 [1952] Paper, 352 pages, $15.I have long resisted reading Kurt Vonnegut. In this life of finite time and seemingly infinite and ever expanding good things to read, his biography or writing just did not seem enough to...

On Quotations

by | Dec 24, 2012

On Essays and LettersOn my desk, I have a second edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. The original edition was in 1941; the edition that I have is from 1960. I have seen reference to a fifth edition [seventh —Ed.]. The fourth edition advertisement said that...