David Bowie and the Decade Science Fiction Took Off
Strange Stars: How Science Fiction and Fantasy Transformed Popular Music by Jason Heller. Melville House, 2018. Hardcover, 272 pages, $27. Reviewed by Mark Judge In 1980, musician David Bowie released a new album, Scary Monsters. On the record was a song called “Ashes...
He Knew the Reason We Fight
Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia L. Haven. Michigan State University Press, 2018. Paperback, 346 pages, $30. Reviewed by Patrick Kurp In their 1941 short feature In the Sweet Pie and Pie, Larry, Curly, and Moe are ex-cons hoping to marry three...
This Is Not How We Got Here
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder. Tim Duggan Books, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $27. Reviewed by Sumantra Maitra How did we end up here? Yale scholar and historian, Professor Timothy Snyder’s latest book attempts to explore the issues...
The Neighborliness Not Taken
Won’t You Be My Neighbor directed by Morgan Neville. Tremolo Productions, 2018. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes. By Ryan Shinkel The neighborhood could have never been that friendly. There must have been scars or tattoos underneath all his sweaters, my fellow...
Pharisees and Neocolonialists
Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century by Obianuju Ekeocha. Ignatius Press, 2018. Paperback, 225 pages, $17. Reviewed by Casey Chalk In one of the final scenes of the 2006 film Last King of Scotland, infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin...
The Artist and His Epoch
David Jones on Religion, Politics, and Culture: Unpublished Prose ed. Thomas Berenato, Anne Price-Owen, and Kathleen Henderson Staudt. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Cloth, xviii + 347 pages, $176. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz David Jones (1895–1974) is acknowledged...
Repulsed by the Education Cartel
The Coming Death and Future Resurrection of American Higher Education by Richard J. Bishirjian. St. Augustine’s Press, 2017. Hardcover, 121 pages, $22. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner The Coming Death and Future Resurrection of American Higher Education is the story of...
Why Movies are Prayers
Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen. IVP Books, 2017. Paperback, 208 pages, $16. Reviewed by Mark Judge Film critic Josh Larsen has written a beautiful and grace-filled book. Movies Are Prayers got strong reviews in the Christian...
When Burke Became Burke
Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830–1914: An Intellectual History by Emily Jones. Oxford, 2017. Hardcover, 288 pages, $88. Reviewed by William F. Byrne Two myths, or, at least, oversimplifications, have long surrounded Edmund Burke’s iconic...
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