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 [...]
Religious Freedom After the Sexula Revolution: A Catholic Guide Helen M. Alvaré (Catholic University of America Press, $32.95, 243 pages): Helen M. Alvaré, the Robert A. Levy Chair in Law and Liberty at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, has written a primer, Religious Freedom After the Sexual Revolution, on how to think about a genuine freedom (freedom of religion) in [...]
Bioethics for Nurses: A Christian Moral Vision Alisha Mack and Charles Camosy (Eerdmans, $29.95, 256 pages) Alisha Mack, an assistant professor of nursing at Wesleyan University and Dr. Charles Comosey, a bioethicist and professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University, have come together to write the first bioethics book dedicated to nurses and nursing—Bioethics for Nurses: A Christian Moral Vision. [...]
Angelica Vecchiato, Review The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks that Shook the World by Andrew Lawton (Sutherland House, $21, 168 pages) The three-week sojourn of Canadian truckers on Parliament Hill shattered the record for the longest lasting convoy the world had ever seen. In sub-zero February temperatures, peace-making Canadians shocked the world, breaking from their pacifist constitution and rebelling against [...]
Michael Taube Can you name a popular Christmas movie? I’ll bet you could immediately think of a few. Your children and grandchildren could easily triple that number, too. From memorable cinematic renditions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, to timeless animated classics like A Charlie Brown Christmas and Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town, there’s a holiday treasure for just about everyone. [...]