The World the Habsburgs Built
The Habsburgs: To Rule the World by Martyn Rady. Basic Books 2020. Hardcover, 416 pages, $32. Reviewed by Avi Woolf At their peak in the sixteenth century, they ruled much of the known world. A beacon of the true, universal Catholic faith to many, a source of sorrow...
Discouraging Charity
Who Killed Civil Society? The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms by Howard A. Husock. Encounter Books, 2019. Hardcover, 176 pages $24. Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl It’s a likely sign of the times. On a Tuesday last December, the phone rang with...
A Virus and a Fall of Rome
Scarpia by Piers Paul Read. Bloomsbury, 2016. Hardcover, 364 pages, $27. Reviewed by Trevor C. Merrill You could enjoy this novel about a young Sicilian rising through the ranks of Roman society in the 1790s without knowing anything about Puccini’s Tosca. It’s a...
The Rise of the State, the End of Enlightenment
Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans: The Genevans and the Irish in Time of Revolution By Richard Whatmore. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 512 pages, $37.52. Reviewed by Nayeli L. Riano We often consider the Treaty of Westphalia the beginning of the...
Great fiction can form character and cultivate the moral imagination. @JeffOttoNelson reviews @cjscalia's latest book.
Smith’s claims are sobering, but they do raise important questions related to how to be religious and pass on the Christian faith in the modern age. - @PhilDavignon