The Risks of Levity

The Risks of Levity

Milan Kundera, Ambiguous Prophet Trevor C. Merrill “Those no longer able to see reality with their own eyes are equally unable to hear correctly,” writes Josef Pieper. “It is specifically the man thus impoverished who inevitably falls prey to the demagogical spells of...
Maoism Exported

Maoism Exported

Maoism: A Global Historyby Julia Lovell.Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.Hardcover, 610 pages, $37.50. Reviewed by Thomas Albert Howard As if parodying the era’s radical chic, a 1967 issue of Lui magazine (France’s Playboy) included a supplement illustrated with quotes from Mao...
Two Cheers for the Spanish Empire

Two Cheers for the Spanish Empire

Imperiofobia y leyenda negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos y el Imperio español María Elvira Roca Barea. Siruela, 2016. Paperback, $33. Reviewed by Alberto M. Fernandez The politically correct vandalism we see today in America against statues of Christopher Columbus...
Finding Wisdom at Dusk

Finding Wisdom at Dusk

The Unnamable Present by Roberto Calasso. Translated by Richard Dixon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 208 pages, $26. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp We’re living in strange times. There’s a pervasive sense of a cultural dusk, in many ways, in which...
Sophomore Inclinations and the Research University

Sophomore Inclinations and the Research University

The Rise of the Research University: A Sourcebook edited by Louis Menand, Paul Reitter, and Chad Wellmon. University of Chicago Press, 2017. Paperback, 406 pages, $32.50. Reviewed by Pavlos Papadopoulos Historians of higher education are members of a small subfield of...