Can the United States Have a Good History?
The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900 By Jon K. Lauck. University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. Paperback, 366 pages, $26.95. Reviewed by Daniel J. Fischer. Historians have a complicated job. Their ultimate aim should be to use the available...
Yuval Levin’s Stirring Defense of the Constitution
American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again By Yuval Levin. Basic Books, 2024. Hardcover, 352 pages, $32. Reviewed by Michael Lucchese. Something has gone wrong with America. Even among the politically disengaged, one can detect a...
Thinking Ourselves into Oblivion
Why We Think What We Think: The Rise and Fall of Western Thought By Dan LeRoy. Sophia Institute Press, 2024. Paperback, 240 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by David Weinberger. “How did we get from a world in which some of the smartest people in recorded history were...
Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?
Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis By James Davison Hunter. Yale, 2024. Hardcover, 504 pages, $40. Reviewed by Brad Littlejohn. Being of a chronically pessimistic disposition, I used to enjoy picking out Despair.com posters...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!