Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality David Edmonds (Princeton, $40, 380 pages) Oxford University philosophy professor Derek Parfit is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the last half century but is barely known outside academia. He made important contributions to questions such as identity and freedom, but might be best known for his ideas about future [...]
Paul Tuns: The Story of Abortion in America by Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas (Crossway, $53, 494 pages) Marvin Olasky, author of the Tragedy of American Compassion and Abortion Rites, and Leah Savas, who writes about abortion for World magazine, have written a remarkable work of scholarship, a deep dive into what the subtitle promises, “A Street-Level History, 1652-2022,” of abortion. The [...]
Oswald Clark, Review: Hell to Pay: How the Suppression of Wages is Destroying America by Michael Lind (Portfolio, $39, 213 pages) Conservative writer Michael Lind has followed up his book The New Class War which looked at the trans-Atlantic West through the prism of the growing economic and cultural gap between the university-educated overclass and the working class, with Hell to Pay, a [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads: Essays from The New Criterion Edited by Roger Kimball (Encounter, $28, 234 pages) The New Criterion is an essential conservative review of the culture today, focused on the visual arts, music, books, and the goings-on in academia. Every few years they have a year-long series in their monthly journal dedicated to a particular [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements If you were a fan, you might have experienced the death of singer Gordon Lightfoot last month in different ways depending on where you lived. Expressions of grief and mourning were a testament to his popularity on both sides of the 49th parallel and all over the world, but the tributes and reminiscences [...]
Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America Abraham Reisman (Atria Books, $39.99, 452 pages) Freelance writer Abraham Reisman has written a fascinating book with a misleading title, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. It is common for pundits to make comparisons between the showbiz of professional wrestling and the celebrity style of modern politics, with some offering theories that [...]
Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language Arika Okrent (Oxford UP, $20.95, 264 pages) Linguist Arika Okrent has written a delightful book on the oddities of the English language, Highly Irregular. Okrent looks at hundreds of words and phrases that do not conform to the normal rules of spelling, pronunciation, grammar, and usage, [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it was a very big deal when A.O. Scott, one of the New York Times’ two full-time movie critics, recently announced he was retiring from reviewing films. The news might not have reached you yet, so I’ll give you a minute to digest [...]
Rick McGinnis: Perhaps because no place makes us more anxious than the future, there’s a bottomless appetite for predictions about what happens next. Last year Peter Zeihan broke from the usual pack of prognosticators with The End of the World is Just Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, a thick but very readable book about the world-changing crisis he says has already [...]
Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meaning of the First Amendment Religion Classes Vincent Philip Muñoz (University of Chicago Press, $41 pb, 334 pages) Notre Dame professor of law Vincent Philip Muñoz thoroughly examines the original meaning of the religion clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as understood through the debates at America’s founding, [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements There’s an evergreen appeal to books about the world going to hell. There might be better or worse times to tell a story about civilization falling apart – the ‘30s and ‘70s were ripe for it; the ‘60s and ‘90s not so much. We’re in one of those doomsaying boom times again. I [...]
Angelica Vecchiato: Glorious and Free By Derek Sloan (Sloan Publishing Inc., $38.80, 270 pages) Since Derek Sloan was kicked out of Conservative Party of Canada caucus in 2021, the tales of his political career have garnered quasi-mythic proportions. In the mainstream media vernacular, the former Conservative MP turned Ontario Party leader has been condemned as a “racist” for accepting a donation from [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements I have lost track of the number of times I’ve been watching a movie or TV show and wondered to myself if it was filmed in the first vertical shaft of a coal mine, or if I might be developing cataracts. Apparently, I’m not alone; at least three times in the last year [...]
The Abandoned Generation by Gabriele Kuby (St. Augustine’s Press, $21, 195 pages) Angelica Vecchiato, Review: In a modern world driven by individualism, where the immediate prioritization of the self has been valued over care of the other, humanity has been pulled apart at its seams—and forsaken children are the unfortunate byproduct. The young generation has been pushed to the margins of society, at best [...]
Russell E. Kuykendall, Review: No Excuses: Turning around One of Britain’s Toughest Schools by Alison Colwell (Biteback Publishing, $28, 244 pages) In her book No Excuses, Alison Colwell calls for schools that are focused on the transmission of content to students and the shaping of their character, giving students a foundation for the rest of their lives, wherever life takes them. She [...]