Through the Lens of Civil Society
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney. Harper, 2019. Hardcover, 368 pages, $28. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro Alienated America, by Washington Examiner editor and journalist Tim Carney, is the latest and most expansive...
Things Strange and Admirable
Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings by Tom Shippey. Reaktion Books, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $30. Reviewed by Timothy D. Lusch It is a mark of our Age of Sensitivity that scholars have tried to turn the murderous Vikings into hygge-loving...
The Time That We Are Given
The Outsiding (A Jo Grant Mystery) by Sally Wright. Amazon Digital Services, 2018. Kindle, 1038 kb, $3. Reviewed by Ashlee Cowles Why do we read fiction? A cynic may claim it’s to avoid reality, but the devoted reader knows better. We read stories, including the...
Between Rome and ‘Jerusalem and Athens’
Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers edited by Geoffrey M. Vaughan. The Catholic University of America Press, 2018. Hardcover, 360 pages, $75. Reviewed by Richard M. Reinsch II Leo Strauss greatly revived the study of political philosophy in the twentieth century and...
Moral Reasoning in an Acceptable Time
The Kairos Novels: the Wrinkle in Time and Polly O’Keefe Quartets by Madeleine L’Engle, edited by Leonard S. Marcus. Library of America, 2018. Hardcover, 1917 pages, $80. Reviewed by Matt Miller Fantastic literature has always been beloved of those who feel themselves...
The Importance of Being Iris
Why Iris Murdoch Matters By Gary Browning. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Paperback, 272 pages, $27. Reviewed by Emina Melonic Philosophy and literature are often not very good bedfellows. For the most part, the novelist, or any artist, does not care about philosophy. It...
That Old-Time Civil Religion
The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest by Walter A. McDougall. Yale University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 424 pages, $30. Reviewed by Richard M. Gamble Walter McDougall begins his sober analysis of civil religion...
Sufism as Civil Religion?
Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought by Hüseyin Yilmaz. Princeton University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 384 pages, $40. Reviewed by Fitzroy Morrissey In his very useful pocket-guide The Caliphate: A Pelican Introduction (2016), the...
The Center Holds
The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early Twentieth Century Midwestern Regionalism, 1880–1940 Edited by Jon K. Lauck. Hastings College Press, 2017. Hardcover, 306 pages, $40. Reviewed by Nicole M. King “The Corn Belt,” “America’s Breadbasket,” “The...
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