Classic Literature Made Simple: Fifty Great Books in a Nutshell Joseph Pearce (Ignatius Press, $17.95 USD, 227 pages Great Books for Good Men: Reflections on Literature and Manhood Joseph Pearce (Ignatius Press, $17.95 USD, 153 pages Joseph Pearce, author of numerous literary studies and editor of the St. Austin Review, has had published two similar but distinct books on great literature. In [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: James Burnham: An Intellectual Biography by David T. Byrne (Northern Illinois University Press, $45.95, 242 pages) James Burnham, like many of those on the political Right in the second half of the 20th century, migrated there from the Left. Historian David T. Byrne examines the intellectual journey of this foundational conservative thinker from literary critic and Trotskyite philosopher to one [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: The Man who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer by Daniel Flynn (Encounter, $54.99, 544 pages) Frank Meyer is the most important conservative whose name you never heard. Perhaps more than anyone not named William F. Buckley, he shaped American conservatism to adopt the seemingly contradictory stances of promoting a socially dynamic economic freedom with respect for [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Buckley: The Life and Revolution that Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus (Random House, $54, 1018 pages) The conservative columnist George F. Will says that before there was Ronald Reagan there was Barry Goldwater, that before that there was Goldwater there was National Review magazine, and before NR there was its founder William F. Buckley. Buckley was without doubt, the most influential [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements On May 20, 2020, just two months into the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, New York governor Andrew Cuomo gave one of his daily press conferences – a “state of the plague” address of sorts, reliably covered in the legacy media. (He would win an Emmy for “masterful use of television to inform and calm [...]
A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century Louise Perry (Polity, $19.95, 165 pages) In 2022, feminist journalist Louise Perry wrote The Case against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, which poignantly prosecuted the case against the notion that the Sexual Revolution liberated women. She has updated and adapted her book to gear it toward [...]
Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company Patrick McGee (Scribner, $43, 437 pages) Journalist Patrick McGee reports in his book Apple in China, about how one of the world’s largest companies, Apple, maker of the iPhone and other ubiquitous consumer gadgets, “bound its future inextricably to a ruthless authoritarian state” – that of Red China. McGee, a former Wall [...]
After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman Philosopher Thomas M. Ward (Word on Fire, $36, 201 pages) In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Stoicism, from academic publications to YouTube videos, about Zeno, Marcus Aureliu and Seneca, among others. There is much to recommend in Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy that taught that virtue is the highest good [...]
Mark Twain Ron Chernow (Penguin, $60, 1174 pages) Ron Chernow, biographer of J.P Morgan, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant, has turned his attention to the most American of authors, Mark Twain. Chernow describes Twain, born Samuel Clemons in 1835, and his search for fame and fortune in a thoroughly researched, rich, and brisk-moving 1100-page biography. Chernow says that Twain “thrust himself [...]
Paul Tuns Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates (Knopf, $37.95, 318 pages) To many on the Right, Bill Gates is a villain, a personification of the World Economic Forum Man. To social conservatives, he is another billionaire using his wealth to promote left-wing social causes including depopulation in the developing world. To some on the Left, he’s just another baneful plutocrat. [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Corrupted by Fear: How the Charter was Betrayed, and What Canadians Can Do about It by John Carpay (Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, $24.95, 303 pages) John Carpay will be familiar to our readers as author of the popular Law Matters column in this paper. Many will know him as the founder and president of the Justice Center for Constitutional [...]
Unholy Kingdom: Religion, Corruption and Violence in Saudi Arabia Malise Ruthven (Verso, $46, $368) BBC editor Malise Ruthven has written an expose of Saudi Arabia, the Unholy Kingdom, the alliance between the House of Saud – the royal family that ruled modern Saudi Arabia since its founding – and extremist imams who he labels a “sectarian Islamic cult.” Their extreme Wahhabism has become [...]
The Baton and the Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin Lucy Ash (Icon Books, $36, 384 pages) Journalist Lucy Ash has written a broadside attack on the Russian Orthodox Church and its relationship with Moscow, which inevitably focuses on how the Church provides ideological backing for Vladimir Putin’s regime. Ash, who has worked as a foreign correspondent in Russia for three [...]
Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, The Wickedest Man in Europe John Callahan (Princeton, $48, 315 pages): Bernard Mandeville was a self-exiled Dutch writer who found his work on the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Banned Books). The libertarian writer is most famous for The Fable of the Bees, a book which stood trial in 1723 in Middlesex [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements Lately I’ve been getting served a rush of media asking the question “Is the world getting worse?” in the form of online articles, Twitter/X threads, blog posts and YouTube videos. Most of the blame goes to social media and the spread of “misinformation,” which has made us angrier, less hopeful and increasingly distrustful [...]