Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis (Regnery: $38, 296 pages) Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis have written the definitive book that works as both an extended critique of abortion and as an invaluable and insightful reference about its detrimental effects. The authors note in their introduction that “Abortion harms every single [...]
No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental Right Becca Andrews (Public Affairs, $37, 267 pages) In No Choice, Mother Jones journalist Becca Andrews offers accounts of abortion before and during the Roe v. Wade era to argue that the battle for abortion is not merely part of a larger battle for women’s rights, but [...]
Paul Tuns, Review Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to do About It by Richard V. Reeves (Brookings, $38, 242 pages) Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition by Nicholas Eberstadt (Templeton, $17, 238 pages) Richard Reeves of the liberal Brookings Institute has written an important, if at times annoying, book about the plight of boys [...]
Harold Rosenberg: A Critic’s Life by Debra Bricker Balken (University of Chicago Press, $52, 640 pages) Paul Tuns Review Harold Rosenberg was a public intellectual long before that term was coined, a leading cultural critic in the New York scene in the middle of the 20th century. Debra Bricker Balken has written the first -- and long overdue -- comprehensive biography of [...]
Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America & How to Fight Back Chris Stirewalt (Center Street, $37, 246 pages) Chris Stirewalt, a former political editor at Fox News who lost his job for his role in prematurely (but correctly) calling Arizona for Joe Biden in 2020, is the author of a new, indispensable look at why mainstream journalism is broken. [...]
From the editor’s desk Paul Tuns I read a lot and many of the books I read get reviewed in these pages, either in longer reviews or essays under my byline or as unsigned brief reviews. But there are many that I can’t get around to writing a review about and I want to let you know about several of them, and [...]
Mary Zwicker, Review: A new feminist, left-wing documentary on the topic of birth control has been released … but it’s not what you would expect. The new film, produced by Ricki Lake’s production company and directed by Abby Epstein, is called The Business of Birth Control, and it provides an in-depth analysis of the history of hormonal birth control, concluding that women need [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet by Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley (Cato Institute, $45, 547 pages) Worries about "overpopulation" are always followed by demands for population control to prevent the growing mass of people from stripping the planet bare. The problem with that line of thinking according to Marian Tupy [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Prairie Lion: The Life & Times of Ted Byfield by Jonathon Van Maren (Christian Heritage Press, $19.50, 247 pages) When Jonathon Van Maren set out to write the biography of Ted Byfield, he was amazed that one had not already been written. As the author notes, if Byfield had floated in the stream of fashionable opinion, he would have been [...]
Faith, Force, and Reason: An Armchair History of the Rule of Law David M. Beatty (University of Toronto Press, $40 pb, 336 pages): David M. Beatty, professor emeritus in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, has written a truly remarkable and valuable book, Faith, Force, and Reason. In the preface he sets out his project: “This is a book [...]
The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage and Moderation Daniel J. Mahoney (Encounter, $41, 231 pages): Daniel Maloney, a political philosopher whose byline appears regularly in conservative publications exploring big ideas, has written a highly readable book examining statesmanship through the lens of exemplary figures as Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and Vaclav Havel, [...]
Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the Modern Age Rémi Brague (Notre Dame, $34 pb, 142 pages): The French Catholic conservative Rémi Brague’s latest English-language book, Curing Mad Truths -- based on a series of lectures to English-speaking audiences -- examines the fundamental problems with modernity and finds the cure for the errors of modern man’s ways in the Middle Ages. Brague [...]
The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas Gal Beckerman (Crown, $39, 331 pages): Gal Beckerman’s The Quiet Before examines how radical ideas are born, stir, rise, and eventually influence the general public. Beckerman argues that for ideas to grow in popularity, they must be sustained by a small group of committed believers who share them through smaller circulation media [...]
Wild Problems: A Guide to Decisions That Define Us by Russ Roberts (Portfolio, $36, 207 pages) Paul Tuns Review: Russ Roberts is the host of the EconTalk podcast, author of numerous books about economics, and president of Shalem College in Jerusalem. After spending most of his life applying the rules of economics as taught at the University of Chicago -- the importance [...]
Angelica Vecchiato, Review: Help Her Be Brave by Amy Ford (Moody Publishers, $7.90, 201 pages) Panic, fear and shame gripped 19-year-old Amy Ford. Young and in-love, she found herself facing an unplanned pregnancy. Although a steadfast Christian and pro-lifer, feeling pressured, Ford seriously considered an abortion. Too distressed at the doctor’s office to go through with the procedure, she was sent home by [...]