Casting Extras in The Truman Show
The Truman Show Written by Andrew Niccol. Directed by Peter Weir. Paramount, 1998. Reviewed by Titus Techera On its twentieth anniversary, The Truman Show turns out to have been prophetic about what happens to us when we go digital. In the terms of the old world of...
The Price of the Peculiar Institution
Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery by Calvin Schermerhorn. Cambridge University Press, 2018. 264 pages; hardcover, $100; paperback, $25. Reviewed by Casey Chalk On a recent trip to the Tidewater region of Virginia to visit family, my appreciation for...
Ancient Walls and New Bridges
Eduard Habsburg “And thou, O Wall, O sweet, O lovely Wall …” “Why are you posting pics of walls all the time? Shouldn’t we rather … you know, build bridges?” a fellow Tweeter ironically suggested after I posted the umpteenth snapshot of my walk along the Aurelian Wall...
Can Bureaucrats Be Virtuous?
When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency by Bernardo Zacka. Belknap Press, 2017. Hardcover, 320 pages, $35. Reviewed by John Ehrett It’s easy to view the modern administrative state as a faceless regulatory apparatus, or a lumbering...
A Rewarding Experience Awaits
Rendez-vous with Art by Philippe de Montebello and Martin Gayford. Thames & Hudson, 2014. Hardcover, 248 pages, $35. Reviewed by Stephen Schmalhofer While his cause lingers, if Dante were to be canonized, museum patrons will have a patron saint. As tourists...
Haiti’s Role in the American Civil War
The Slaveholding Crisis: Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War by Carl Lawrence Paulus. LSU Press, 2017. Hardcover, 328 pages, $49. Reviewed by Kyle Sammin In the teaching of American history, the United States is often portrayed as going it alone....
On Dragon Hunting
James V. Schall, S. J. Heywood Broun’s very short story, The Fifty-First Dragon, was published in 1921 by Harcourt Brace. It concerns a medieval school for the formation of knights. Matriculating in this school is an apparently inept candidate by the ironic name of...
Persuasion in the Age of Twitter
How to Win an Argument: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Persuasion by Marcus Tullius Cicero, translated and edited by James M. May. Princeton University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 288 pages, $17. Reviewed by David G. Bonagura, Jr. It is no secret that American public...
Two Cheers for Ultramontanism
Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church by John W. O’Malley. Harvard University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 295 pages, $25. Reviewed by Tyler Dobbs After many long centuries, the papacy had finally met its end. No, we are not talking about the...
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