Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?
Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis By James Davison Hunter. Yale, 2024. Hardcover, 504 pages, $40. Reviewed by Brad Littlejohn. Being of a chronically pessimistic disposition, I used to enjoy picking out Despair.com posters...
The Life of Joseph Epstein
Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life By Joseph Epstein. Free Press, 2024. Hardcover, 304 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by Chuck Chalberg. Never? Maybe saying so really is OK, especially when you know that you had little to...
Order for a Disordered Time
The Roots of American Order By Russell Kirk. ISI Books, 2003. Paperback, 534 pages, $18. Reviewed by Daniel Pitt. If we go back fifty years to 1974, one might say it was annus horribilis for America. The US was in a grip of an energy crisis, the Presidency of Richard...
Kirk’s Constitution: From the Roots to the End of American Order?
The Roots of American Order By Russell Kirk. ISI Books, 2003. Paperback, 534 pages, $18. Reviewed by Bruce P. Frohnen. Let me begin with what may seem an odd claim: the American Constitution is a central concern of Russell Kirk’s vast body of work. This statement is...
Kirk’s American Founding Documents and the Unwritten Constitution
The Roots of American Order By Russell Kirk. ISI Books, 2003. Paperback, 534 pages, $18. Reviewed by Gary L. Gregg II. I doubt any readers of this essay came to it without knowing a good amount about the work and ideas of Russell Amos Kirk. If by chance such a...
The Babbitt School of Conservatism
The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken By Claes G. Ryn. Republic Book Publishers, 2023. Hardcover, 468 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Daniel McCarthy. In the 2020s, “conservatism” sounds passé, and its failure is taken for granted. A new right finds...
The Conservative Need for Conservative Philosophy
The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken By Claes G. Ryn. Republic Book Publishers, 2023. Hardcover, 468 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Michael Federici. American conservatism has been plagued by an identity crisis and political failure since its birth...
A Half Century of Conservative Criticism
The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken By Claes G. Ryn. Republic Book Publishers, 2023. Hardcover, 468 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by John Grove. Since at least 2016, conservatism has been undergoing a bit of an intellectual identity crisis. Perhaps...
Literary Virtue and Vice
Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age By Rachel B. Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel M. De Smith Roberts. Baker Academic, 2024. Paperback, 240 pages, $24.99. Reviewed by Sarah Reardon. I sat in disbelief in front...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!