Choosing a Currency
Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin? by Lawrence H. White. Cambridge University Press, 2023. Paperback, 185 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by David Weinberger. If the last couple years have taught us anything about inflation, it is that the value of our money can rapidly...
“To Help Man Endure by Lifting His Heart”: Earl Hamner at 100
By James E. Person Jr. “My grandfather used to say that nobody owns a mountain, but getting born and living and dying in its shadow, we loved Waltons’ Mountain and felt it was ours.” Spoken in the gentle, Southern/Scotch-Irish accent typical of rural Virginia, those...
The Women of the Bible Speak Again
The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak: Lessons on Faith from Nine Biblical Families By Shannon Bream. Broadside Books, 2022. Hardcover, 288 pages, $26.99. Reviewed by Annmarie McLaughlin. In The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak: Lessons on Faith from...
Inside the Split Mind of George Kennan
Kennan: A Life Between Worlds By Frank Costigliola. Princeton University Press, 2023. Hardcover, 648 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by John C. Chalberg. Biographies of George Frost Kennan can have tales of their own. Or so concludes Kennan’s most recent biographer,...
Real Natural Law
Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths of the Constitution By Hadley Arkes. Regnery Gateway, 2023. Hardcover, 352 pages, $32.99. Reviewed by William H. Rooney. Hadley Arkes is a prophet in a materialist and positivist age, and he prophesies at length...
Knights On a Darkling Plain
Diogenes Unveiled: A Paul Mankowski Collection Edited by Philip E. Lawler. Ignatius Press, 2022. Paperback, 294 pages, $19.95. Christendom Lost and Found: Meditations for a Post Post-Christian Era By Father Robert McTeigue, S.J. Ignatius Press, 2022. Paperback, 125...
Mysteries Require Odes, Not Emails
The Saint Mary’s Book of Christian Verse Chosen and Introduced by Edward Short. Foreword by Dana Gioia. Gracewing, 2022. Paperback, 412 pages, $25. Reviewed by David G. Bonagura, Jr. In a technocratic and materialist age, an individual or institution’s attitude toward...
Every Mann
Thomas Mann: New and Selected Stories By Thomas Mann. Translated by Damion Searls. Liveright, 2023. Hardcover, 256 pages, $40.00. Reviewed by Joshua Hren. Thomas Mann towers intimidatingly over the twentieth century’s literary landscape, not least because “the icy...
Lofty Prose in a New Translation of Beowulf
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation Translated by Ben J. Reinhard. Cluny Media, 2022. Paperback, 278 pages, $18.95. Reviewed by Jonathan B. Himes. To describe Ben Reinhard’s approach to his new verse translation of Beowulf, the back cover offers the following keywords:...
.@JM_Butcher himself admits that there are in fact important divisions within American society, but he believes that “Americans are united on some very important questions that are driving debates in statehouses, schoolhouses, and even your house.” In this, as in nearly all that
Despite [Kirk's] and others’ efforts to prevent further decline in transcendent beliefs, more than a century later, it is clear that those Americans who adhere to them represent a small and frequently marginalized minority. @fhmcclatchey must be counted among their number, for he