Facing the Past

Facing the Past

Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder. Basic Books, 2021. Hardcover, 656 pages, $35. Reviewed by Miles Smith IV In his 1953 opus The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk summed up John Calhoun’s contribution to intellectual conservatism succinctly when he noted that...
Is the Religious Right Really so Incomprehensible?

Is the Religious Right Really so Incomprehensible?

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism By Benjamin M. Freidman. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. Hardcover, 560 pages, $37.50 Reviewed by James E. Hartley Sometimes it seems like discussions in this country are taking place in two isolated camps. Every now and then, that suspicion...
Snowden Speaks of Africa

Snowden Speaks of Africa

By Anika T. Prather “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the Flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” —Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” African Americans have always dreamed of another world. We have...
Killing the Boomers

Killing the Boomers

Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster by Helen Andrews. Sentinel, 2021. Hardcover, 256 pages, $27. Reviewed by Anthony M. Barr My history thesis advisor in college was fond of saying that one of the main drivers in new scholarship is...
The Fruits of Empire

The Fruits of Empire

The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria by Owen White. Harvard University Press, 2021. Hardcover, 336 pages, $39.39. Reviewed by Luke Nicastro Nearly sixty years after the demise of French Algeria, both colonizer and colonized continue to...