A Great Yarn

From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faithby Sohrab Ahmari. Ignatius Press, 2019. Hardcover, 240 pages, $23. Reviewed by Matthew Hennessey If you’re going to write a book about your religious conversion it’d better be a great yarn. And if you’re going to...

Citizens of the World

The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna. Naval Institute Press, [1962] 2001. Paper, 624 pages, $26. Reviewed by Casey Chalk This October marked the one-year anniversary of the release of Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle, an American/Canadian couple captured by the Taliban...

Orpheus Britannicus

A New English Music: Composers and Folk Traditions in England’s Musical Renaissance from the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century by Tim Rayborn. McFarland & Co., 2016. Paperback, 312 pages, $40. Reviewed by R. J. Stove When I come to England, I don’t claim...

The Scientific Case for an Alarming Utopia

Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker. Viking, 2018. Hardcover, 556 pages. $35. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Steven Pinker’s writing is intriguing. Just about everything he says is half right and half wrong. In this and...

Pharisees and Neocolonialists

Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century by Obianuju Ekeocha. Ignatius Press, 2018. Paperback, 225 pages, $17. Reviewed by Casey Chalk In one of the final scenes of the 2006 film Last King of Scotland, infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin...