by Gerard T. Mundy | Jul 7, 2019
Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth. Atlantic Books, 2019. paperback, 288 pages, $16. By Gerard T. Mundy Communal institutions keep the classical liberal–free market state from implosion. As the strength of what this essay identifies...
by Harrison F. Dietzman | Jul 7, 2019
Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies by Paul A. Cantor University Press of Kentucky, 2019. Hardcover, 224 pages, $40. Reviewed by Harrison F. Dietzman Anna Sorokin, an émigré fashion student of modest means,...
by Caden McCann | Jul 7, 2019
Why Baseball Matters By Susan Jacoby. Yale University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 224 pages, $26. Reviewed by Caden McCann Baseball remains one of the most profitable sports franchises in the country, trailing just behind football and basketball. In Why Baseball Matters,...
by William Anthony Hay | Jun 30, 2019
God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case against the American Revolution by Gregg L. Frazer. University Press of Kansas, 2018. Hardcover, 320 pages, $35. Reviewed by William Anthony Hay Historians over recent decades have put considerable effort...
by Carl Rollyson | Jun 30, 2019
Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 624 pages, $40. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson We know so little about Shakespeare’s life. The facts could be put onto no more than a page. That has not prevented biographers from...
by Francis P. Sempa | Jun 30, 2019
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer. Knopf, 2019. Hardcover, 608 pages, $30. Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa Richard Holbrooke’s life and career as a member of the American foreign policy establishment symbolized the decline...
by Micah Meadowcroft | Jun 23, 2019
Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism by James Simpson. Belknap Press, 2019. Hardcover, 464 pages, $35. Reviewed by Micah Meadowcroft For those who can competently read it’s a regrettable feature of life that the interpolation of...
by John P. McCarthy | Jun 23, 2019
By John P. McCarthy On May 6th I received an email that historian John Lukacs had died at the age of ninety-five. Looking up, I was startled to notice twelve of his books on the bookshelf immediately behind my computer. Such was the measure of the man that I wanted to...
by Patrick Callahan | Jun 23, 2019
John Milton’s The Book of Elegies translated by A. M. Juster The Paideia Institute for Humanistic Study, Inc., 2019. Paperback, 135 pages, $15. Reviewed by Patrick Callahan As we are told Mount Helicon had two fonts of poetry, so we witness in recent years an...
by Scott Beauchamp | Jun 23, 2019
The Unnamable Present by Roberto Calasso. Translated by Richard Dixon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 208 pages, $26. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp We’re living in strange times. There’s a pervasive sense of a cultural dusk, in many ways, in which...
