The Doctor as Moralist
The Proper Procedure and Other Stories by Theodore Dalrymple. New English Review Press, 2017. Paperback, 162 pages, $19. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp The phenomenon of the literary doctor presents an interesting case in reading biography into a literary oeuvre. They...
The Doctor as Amoralist
Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations by Arnold van de Laar, translated by Andy Brown. St. Martin’s Press, 2018. Hardcover, 357 pages, $30. Reviewed by Karl C. Schaffenburg In his entertaining and readable review of the history of surgery,...
Dropouts from a Mercenary Society
The Bump on Brannigan’s Head by Myles Connolly with an introduction and notes by Stephen Mirarchi. Cluny Media, (1950) 2018. Paperback, 252 pages, $18. Dan England and the Noonday Devil Myles Connolly, with an introduction and notes by Stephen Mirarchi. Cluny Media,...
An Artist in History
A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley. by Jane Kamensky. W.W. Norton and Company, 2017. Hardcover, 544 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by James Baresel Much as honesty forces the admission that they are not of equal aesthetic quality, the works of John...
Rethinking Hollywood History
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Annapurna Pictures, 2018. Reviewed by Titus Techera The most interesting thing on Netflix now is the new Coen Brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Western in six episodes, starting with...
At the Suffrage of the State
Liberal Suppression: 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech by Philip Hamburger. University of Chicago, 2018. Hardcover, 432 pages, $55. Reviewed by Bruce Frohnen Why read legal history, especially if you are not a lawyer? The field is dominated by specialists and...
Portrait of a Genius
Portraits of Wittgenstein, Abridged edition Edited by F. A. Flowers III and Ian Ground. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Paperback, 512 pages, $48. Reviewed by Frank Freeman The most infamous “episode” in the life of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)...
After the Guns Fall Silent
War and Remembrance: The Story of the American Battle Monuments Commission by Thomas H. Conner. University Press of Kentucky, 2018. Hardcover, 376 pages, $50. Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl An obscure poem reads like this: “That bullet forever depriving him of...
Sour ’68
by Joseph Bottum and Justin L. Blessinger Ever feel like 2018 is 1968 come back from the grave? Hello Darkness, my old friend, Simon and Garfunkel sang in the 1960s, I’ve come to talk with you again. Fifty years on, as 2018 winds down to a sour expiration, like the...
Person Means Relation attempts “to find a more adequate way of speaking [about the person] that saves us from defaulting to the language of things...Someone” Walsh teaches "Is utterly different from something.” - @pricerobertg https://buff.ly/2367Eag @ubookman