The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War By Joanne B. Freeman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Hardcover, 480 pages, $28. Reviewed by John Bicknell One could make the case that Yale professor Joanne Freeman is obsessed with people getting...
Confessions of a Jet-Set Conservative

Confessions of a Jet-Set Conservative

The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right by Max Boot. Liveright, 2018. Hardcover, 288 pages, $25. Reviewed by Ben Sixsmith Max Boot, like newspaper columnist Jennifer Rubin, once claimed to be a conservative critic of President Donald Trump, but has become...
His Old Kentucky Home

His Old Kentucky Home

Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President by James C. Klotter. Oxford University Press, 2018. Hardcover, xix + 506 pages, $35. Reviewed by Miles Smith When Abraham Lincoln called Henry Clay his beau ideal of a statesmen in the 1840s, he echoed respectable businessmen...
When Democracy Came, It Came in a Flurry

When Democracy Came, It Came in a Flurry

The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson By Mark R. Cheathem. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. Paperback, 248 pages, $25. Reviewed by John Bicknell “I have been charmed to see that a presidential election now produces scarcely any...
Your Political Opponent Might Be Human

Your Political Opponent Might Be Human

The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis by Martha Nussbaum. Simon & Schuster, 2018. Hardcover, 249 pages, $17. Reviewed by Anthony M. Barr In the preface to her recent book The Monarchy of Fear, philosopher Martha Nussbaum observes that...