Toward an American Iliad
American Independence in Verse By Bradford Skow. Pentameter Press, 2025. Paperback, 94 pages, $9.99. Reviewed by Thomas Philbrick. In Book III of the Aeneid, Aeneas lands with his men on the shores of Carthage after fleeing Troy and surviving a string of harrowing...
The Midwestern Gothic Stories of Eric Cyr
Here It Snows in June & Other Stories By Eric Cyr. Wiseblood Books, 2026. Paperback, 156 pages, $16. Reviewed by Nadya Williams. A driver on I-71 who takes the exit toward Ashland, Ohio, my home now for nearly three years, will be greeted with an oversized welcome...
Joseph Story and the Politics of the Early Republic
Contending for American Nationhood: Joseph Story and the Debate Over a Federal Common Law By Benjamin Clark. Lexington Books, 2024. Hardcover, 252 pages, $120.00. Reviewed by John G. Grove. The debate over federal common law does not generally fire the imaginations...
Our Lives in the Panopticon
The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control Jacob Siegel. Henry Holt and Co., 2026. Hardcover, 336 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by Albert Norton, Jr. Just within the last year, Paul Kingsnorth published Against The Machine about the source of our increasing...
Decades ago, Robert Nisbet anticipated many of today’s concerns about loneliness, bureaucracy, and declining community. Luke C. Sheahan (@lsheahan) revisits the ideas behind those warnings and their relevance today.
Questions about first principles have become fashionable again. @HorcherF and @DanJTPitt apply generosity to smooth contention between intellectuals and politicians, they embrace the tension between theory and practice, and they highlight the power of particularity as a source of