A Singular Universal

A Singular Universal

The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene by Richard Greene. W. W. Norton, 2021. Hardcover, xvi + 591 pp., $40. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz Jean-Paul Sartre once classified Gustave Flaubert as a “singular universal.” For Sartre, such a writer’s oeuvre becomes a...
Putting Burke into Action

Putting Burke into Action

Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 928 pages, $40. Reviewed by James Baresel Few nineteenth-century statesman are as famed for their positive contributions to Europe’s practical politics as...
America’s Angriest Writer

America’s Angriest Writer

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck by William Souder. Norton, 2020. Hardcover, 464 pages, $32. Reviewed by Margot Enns In a key scene in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Cal, the darker, moodier brother, blackmails his brother, Aron, to keep quiet about Cal’s...
The Soul of a Free Man

The Soul of a Free Man

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30. Reviewed by Kyle Sammin In the American Revolution, Enlightenment principles, natural rights, and the traditions of English...
The Last Plantagenet

The Last Plantagenet

Uncrowned Queen: The Life of Margaret Beaufort, Mother of the Tudors By Nicola Tallis. Basic Books, 2020. Hardcover, 416 pages, $32. Reviewed by Garrett Robinson The Tudors, unfortunately famous now primarily through film and pulp-histories, have a name for themselves...