In Praise of Poetry and Form
The Great Game: Essays on Poetics By Amit Majmudar. Acre Books, 2024. Paperback, 288 pages, $18. Reviewed by Steven Knepper. Literature, Amit Majmudar warns, must never plod: “Plodding prose, plodding thought, rhythmless lifeless stuff you can’t step to: that’s...
Monster is the Machine
The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origin of Bovadium By J. R. R. Tolkien. William Morrow, 2025. Hardcover, 144 pages, $26.99. Reviewed by Ben Reinhard. When Russell Kirk decried the automobile as “a mechanical Jacobin”—a revolutionary naturally destructive of...
After the New Left: Rereading Breaking Ranks
By John C. “Chuck” Chalberg. The recent death of Norman Podhoretz prompted me to return to his “political memoir,” Breaking Ranks. Published in 1979, it deserves to be read or re-read today—and not simply as a historical account of his evolution from left to right...
Amici
Michelangelo and Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius By William E. Wallace. Princeton University Press, 2026. Hardcover, 248 pages, $35.00. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. There is a running joke that Americans remain perpetually torn between Puritanism and pornography....
Catholic or Nothing
Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century By Melanie McDonagh. Yale University Press, 2026. Hardcover, 354 pages, $38. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. In September 2025, King Charles III visited the Birmingham Oratory to...
No Seed Which Dies Remains Alone
The Locust Years By Paul J. Pastor. Wiseblood Books, 2025. Paperback, 129 pages, $20. Reviewed by Sarah Reardon. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”...
Words from the Hearth
Home Songs By Sarah Reardon. Resource Publications, 2025. Paperback, 46 pages, $6. Reviewed by Annmarie McLaughlin. Sarah Reardon’s Home Songs, a collection of twenty poems about marriage and family life (seven of which were previously published individually), has...
A Knight of the American West
The Last Westerner By Chilton Williamson Jr. St. Augustine’s Press, 2025. Paperback, 386 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by Patrick J. Walsh. Apparently, there are still cavaliers and men who believe in love between men and women. Chilton Williamson’s new novel, The...
Coming to Terms with Sherman
Gates of Heaven: A Novel By Glenn Arbery. Wiseblood Books, 2025. Paperback, 554 pages, $20. Reviewed by Chilton Williamson, Jr. Gates of Heaven is Glenn Arbery’s third novel; it is also the last in a trilogy that, reckoning by the publication dates, was a labor that...
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