Donald DeMarco Review Jérôme Lejeune: A Man of Science and Conscience by Aude Dugast, translated by Michael J. Miller (Ignatius Press, $20, 393 pages). This, Jérôme Lejeune: A Man of Science and Conscience by Aude Dugast, is a work to be cherished. “The world needs this book,” states Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, “because the world needs to [...]
Paul Tuns Review The Choice: The Abortion Divide in America by Danielle D’Souza Gill (Hachette, $22.99, 309 pages) The cover of Danielle D’Souza Gill’s book about abortion prominently displays the words The Choice surrounded by pink concentric circles on a pink background. The cover looks like one that would be chosen for a book written in favour of “the choice” to have [...]
The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization Paul Strathern (Pegasus Books, $38.95, 371 pages) The recovery of common sense for a culture gone haywire requires that we know and understand what makes our civilization great, which by definition includes knowledge of our history. Novelist and historian Paul Strathern (The Venetians, The Medicis), has written a marvelous, wide-ranging, and [...]
Paul Tuns Review: Little Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competitive Age by Matt Feeney (Basic Books, $35, 303 pages) In Little Platoons, Matt Feeney, a writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker and National Review, describes how the family – an “irreplaceable zone of human connections” – is under pressure from the hyper-competitive race parents participate in to give [...]
The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: Stephen R. Soukoup (Encounter, $33.99, 200 pages) Stephen Soukoup, a finance professional is the senior commentator for The Political Forum and a fellow in culture and the economy at the Culture of Life Foundation. In his new book The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, he shows how the Marxist march through the institutions has made its way to [...]
Paul Tuns: Review The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos by Sohrab Ahmari (Convergent, $36, 298 pages) Sohrab Ahmari has been one of the most prominent critics of the brand of conservatism best characterized as fusionism -- the National Review-led unification of libertarian and socially conservative priorities in a supposedly cohesive movement. In recent years, Ahmari, the [...]
Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of them Admirable George Weigel (Ignatius, $24, 221 pages) George Weigel, the popular Catholic writer and biographer of Pope John Paul II, has collected more than 60 columns, essays and eulogies on (mostly) famous people Weigel knew, sometimes personally, occasionally far afar, who have died. Many of the names [...]
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism Benjamin M. Friedman (Knopf, $50, 534 pages) Benjamin M. Friedman, a former chairman of the Harvard economics department, has written a masterful and accessible intellectual history showing, not as R.H. Tawney did in his book of the same title in the early 1900s about the influence of religion on economics but rather how religious ideas have [...]
Road to Redemption: The Liberal Party of Canada, 2006-2019 Brooke Jeffrey (University of Toronto Press, $39.95, 322 pages) Brooke Jeffrey, a Concordia University professor of political science and long-time Liberal activist, follows up her history of the party during the Chretien-Martin feud, Divided Loyalties, with a volume that looks at the post-Martin political lows of the party and its revival under Justin Trudeau. [...]
Pagans & Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac Steven D. Smith (Eerdmans, $65, 386 pages) Steven D. Smith, coordinator of the University of San Diego’s Institute for Law and Religion, has written a provocative book arguing that today’s culture wars are really a rehash of the ancient debates between pagans and Christians. Smith is both scholarly [...]
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay | (Encounter, $37.95, 351 pages) Helen Pluckrose (a historian) and James Lindsay (a mathematician) have provided a useful public service by exposing the bogus “scholarship” that infects too much of the modern university and how this politically motivated work has jumped from being a self-perpetuating field [...]