Reviews

Meditations Marcus Aurelius, translated by Aaron Poochigian (Liveright, $29.99, 240 pages) In recent years Stoicism, the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy that stressed self-control as the path to the well-lived life in accordance with nature, has enjoyed an intellectual renaissance. Although it began in Greece, its most famous practitioners and expositors were Roman, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius (121–180 A.D.), the latter a philosopher-king. Aaron [...]

Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary Jan Jekielek (Skyhorse Publishing, $44.99, 220 pages) This paper’s editorial policy is to refer to Communist China as Red China, a reminder that the global behemoth is still a communist country. But as Jan Jekielek illustrates in Killed to Order about China’s organ harvesting industry, the ‘Red’ [...]

Russell Kirk on America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776: Edited by Michael Lucchese (Creed and Culture, $36.99, 210 pages) The new publishing house Creed and Culture has helped mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by collecting excerpts from the works of American conservative essayist Russell Kirk. The collection, edited by Michael Lucchese, with a foreword by Bradley J. [...]

Paul Tuns, Review: The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition: Volume 1 The Ancient World and Christendom by Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins (Golden Thread Academic, $155.99, 1258 pages) The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition: Volume 2 The Modern and Contemporary West by Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins (Golden Thread Academic, $155.99, 874 pages) Among the [...]

Glenn Harlan Reynolds (Encounter Broadside, $12.99, 46 pages) Glenn Harlan Reynolds, founder of InstaPundit, has written a short, stark warning, Seductive AI in which he argues that artificial intelligence presents a threat to human beings well short of an extinction-level event. He says that superhuman, sentient, artificial general intelligence (AGI) could “conquer the world” through “cuteness, or sexiness, or simply friendliness” because [...]

Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling, Jonathan D. Cohen (Columbia Global Reports, $27.95, 185 pages) Jonathan D. Cohen, senior program officer for American Institutions, Society, and the Public Good at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, writes, “There have always been Americans driven to ruin by gambling. But never have so many been driven to ruin so easily, and [...]

Selected Letters of John Updike: Edited by James Schiff (Penguin Random House, $73, 912 pages) John Updike is perhaps the preeminent example of what is called a man of letters – the author of short stories, novels, critical essays. A number of his letters are collected in a large volume, Selected Letters of John Updike. At 912 pages, one might remark that [...]

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist David Bather Woods (Chicago, $39, 294 pages) Arthur Schopenhauer has been described as a miserable philosopher who saw human life swing between pain and boredom, suffering that is relieved only partially through aesthetic contemplation and the renunciation of desire: “the world and life can afford us no true satisfaction.” The only antidote [...]