Rick McGinnis: We have been living with Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather for 50 years. Even more than the Mario Puzo book on which it’s based, what book can hope to resonate in what has become an increasingly visual, post-literate society? Coppola’s film has had a profound effect not just on movies, but on how a first world society built on [...]
Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution Carl R. Trueman (Crossway, $24, 204 pages): In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (reviewed in these pages in July 2021), Carl R. Trueman, a professor of Biblical and religious studies at Grove City College, examined the philosophical roots of our decadent culture. In Strange New [...]
Angelica Vecchiato Review Fierce Mercy by Abby Johnson (Baker Books, $16.99, 240 pages): The work at an abortion facility is emotionally draining. Tasks, even the most minute ones — walking women from their cars, scheduling the fatal procedure, or witnessing first-hand the carnage after the abortion — tack on, even subconsciously, significant spiritual and emotional tolls for those carrying them out. Shocked [...]
All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory Edward Feser (Ignatius Press, $18 163 pages) Pasadena City College philosophy professor: Edward Feser has offered a brief but timely critique of Critical Race Theory that has taken hold of academia and is at the heart of the woke worldview. Feser, taking his title from Paul’s letter to the [...]
Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America’s Natural Governing Party F.H. Buckley (Encounter Books, $41, 254 pages): Progressive Conservative has negative connotations for Canadian social conservatives, but do not be turned off the title of F.H. Buckley’s latest book, Progressive Conservatism. In it, he argues against the elite capture of both the Democrats (woke activists) and Republicans (libertarians) that ignore working class [...]
The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now Anya Kamenetz (Public Affairs, $37, 338 pages) National Public Radio education correspondent Anya Kamenetz has examined the effect of extended school closures during the pandemic on students and families. She offers vignettes on families coping with the disruption to their children’s regular school routines and there is a great [...]
Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements The story Erich Schwartzel tells in Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy reaches a tipping point in early 2020, just after Disney hosts a gala Los Angeles premiere for its live action remake of their hit 1998 animated feature Mulan. The movie was supposed to be a triumphant affirmation of [...]
Paul Tuns, Review - Give Speech a Chance: Heretical Essays...On What You Can’t Say Or Even Think by Harley Price (FGF Books, $31.25, 325 pages) I should admit some biases when it comes to reviewing Harley Price’s Give Speech a Chance: he is a friend and occasional Interim contributor, I blurbed for his book, the author thanks me in his acknowledgements, and [...]
Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less: Alex Epstein (Portfolio, $40, 480 pages) Alex Epstein, author of the 2014 bestseller The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, returns to the topic to make the scientific and philosophical case for the continued use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) over the preferred energy sources of environmentalists [...]
Angelica Vecchiato Review: Rethinking Sex: A Provocation by Christine Emba (Penguin Random House, $36, 189 pages) Since the dawn of the Sexual Revolution in the 60s, the socio-cultural understanding of sex as something sacred to be preserved for the intimacy of marriage was replaced on a large-scale by the unprecedented doctrines of sexual liberation, spear-headed by second-wave feminists. In Rethinking Sex, Christine [...]
A Modern Global History: Andrei Znamenski (Lexington Books, $176 hc, $61 pb, 451 pages) Andrei Znamenski writes in the introduction to Socialism as a Secular Creed, “When I embarked on this project of galloping through the 150 years of socialism’s history I never suspected that it would be such an exciting and intellectually challenging venture.” In more than 400 pages, he provides [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements Nearly 15 years ago, Emory professor Mark Bauerlein wrote The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, a warning that the cohort just making their way out of the educational system were going to wrack havoc on civic and cultural life. It joined a library of books [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey A few months ago, CLC Youth’s virtual pro-life club watched a bunch of clips from television and film intending to normalize abortion. Despite this agenda, the somber nature of abortion couldn’t quite be obscured, almost as if the scriptwriters, directors, and actors knew they couldn’t depart too far from reality if they [...]
The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law Michael D. Greany and Dawn K. Brohawn (Tan, $30, 383 pages): For 40 years the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab has pushed a globalist agenda of stakeholder capitalism which would make companies answerable not to their shareholders but a global elite that share a centralizing worldview of welfare statism and monopoly capitalism. The [...]
Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity Claudia Goldin (Princeton, $38, 325 pages): Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin’s Career & Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity examines the career and family decisions women make as they try to narrow both the wage gap in the workplace and experience equitable sharing of responsibilities in the home. The most important insight Goldin makes is that [...]