England’s Real-Time Wendell Berry
At the Field’s Edge: Adrian Bell and the English Countryside By Richard Hawking. The Crowood Press, 2019. Hardcover, 222 pages, $45. Reviewed by Robert Grano The name Adrian Bell will be unfamiliar to the great majority of American readers, and even in his native...
For Faith, not Power
Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash that Shaped the Middle East by Fawaz A. Gerges. Princeton University Press, 2019. Paperback, 528 pages, $19.95 Reviewed by Fitzroy Morrissey One would be hard pressed to find two more iconic figures in the history of...
Failures of Interpretation
What Was Literary Impressionism? by Michael Fried. Harvard University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 408 pages, $46.50. Reviewed by Gregory Castle Impressionism arose in late-nineteenth century European and American literary art in response to a crisis in interpretation, a...
Rethinking Association
Why Associations Matter: The Case for First Amendment Pluralism by Luke C. Sheahan. University Press of Kansas, 2020. Hardcover, 227 pages, $35. Reviewed by Bruce P. Frohnen On one level Luke Sheahan’s excellent book is a practical, lawyerly brief aiming to correct a...
A Mind-Body Problem in Chinese Philosophy?
Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism by Edward Slingerland. Oxford University Press, 2019. Cloth, xi + 385 pages, $35. Reviewed by Jason Morgan When Scottish missionary James Legge (1815–1897) translated, partly under the auspices of...
The Sources of Russian Aggression
Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest by Angela Stent. Twelve, 2019. Hardcover, 448 pages, $30. Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy by Anders Åslund. Yale University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 320 pages, $35. Reviewed...
Tories and True Believers
Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall, and Unlikely Return of Conservatism By Ed West. London: Constable, 2020. Hardcover, 426 pages, $29. Reviewed by Derek Turner The story of conservatism since 1945 has been one of failure wrapped up in frequent...
A Paean to Craftsmanship
Works and Days by Hesiod, translated by A. E. Stallings. Penguin Classics, 2018. Paperback, 112 pages, $8.45. Reviewed by J. L. Wall The new Penguin edition of Hesiod’s Works and Days includes a map. This is a curious decision. There are no journeys in the poem,...
From Caliphate to Nation States
Sunnis and Shi’a: A Political History by Laurence Louër. Princeton University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 240 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Garrett Robinson With the death of Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of Muhammad and the third imam, at the Battle of Karbala in 680, the unity...
Here, Kirk references with approval MacIntryre's argument from "After Virtue" on the need for "communities of character."
At the passing of the great Alasdair MacIntyre, one would do well to return to Russell Kirk' s classic essay "Civilization without Religion?" https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2011/04/russell-kirk-civilization-without-religion.html
At the passing of the great Alasdair MacIntyre, one would do well to return to Russell Kirk' s classic essay "Civilization without Religion?"