Finis Germania is a posthumous collection of melancholy writing by German ecologist and sometime academic Rolf Peter Sieferle, who took his own life in despair in 2016. Sieferle regreted the disappearance of a recognizably Western civilization and deplored the likely ecological effects of a European continent thrown open to almost unrestricted Third World immigration. ...
Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape, by Cal Flyn (Viking; 384 pp., $27.00). In our era of ecological angst, many are desperately seeking strategies to mitigate human damage, but Scottish writer Cal Flyn suggests a holistic new way—one that is simultaneously haunted and hopeful—of seeing these problems. She writes often in sorrow, sometimes in righteous...
Poor Gu Ailing, or, as we call her here in the country of her birth, Eileen Gu. She claims to have jumped ship to join the Chinese team for this year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing because she hoped to inspire young athletes on both sides of the Pacific, and to spread goodwill between the nation...
I would like to add three comments about Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried’s acute analysis of America’s historical conflicts over abortion (“Feminism Left and Right Drove America’s Permissive Abortion Laws” January 2022 Chronicles). First, as I have documented in numerous publications, while I would never discount the influence of the women’s rights movement of the...
This history of World War II should occupy an eminent position in any collection of studies on that conflict; it is a comprehensive treatment of its subject that stands head-and-shoulders above most of the stream of books issued since its publication in 1989. I reread it recently and have consulted it frequently. For many years, John Keegan...
Schools across the country have adopted a controversial policy of hiding the LGBT statuses of students from their parents. Sold to the public as an effort to protect children from abuse, the policy effectively circumvents parental consent and notification about their children’s health, safety, and well-being. One Texas family told Chronicles how they fought...
I have often complained that the self-styled progressive of our time never tells us where he wants to go. Progress implies a destination, and rest—sweet and blessed rest—once you have arrived. But that would imply a natural human order to return to, or to attain. And then what? Then what? The progressive sweats. He...
In 1935 the Nazi regime was two years old, fully consolidated at home, and increasingly assertive abroad. It enacted the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws and announced that Germany would start a massive rearmament program, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile, Britain and France were focused on condemning Mussolini’s intervention in Ethiopia and on punishing...
Late author Michael Crichton in 1975 wrote one of his best novels, The Great Train Robbery. Set in England in the 1850s, it is a roman à clef that tells the story of an elaborate heist staged by a a group of ambitious criminals. Their target was a cache of gold on a train traveling...
During Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign for president, when his fortunes were at their nadir, Joe Biden promised that he would nominate the first black woman to the United States Supreme Court. He reportedly made this pledge to James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the powerful African-American congressman, in return for Clyburn’s help in securing the black vote in...
In the current American definition of democracy, all adult citizens should have the right to vote and otherwise participate in politics. Earlier exclusions of women or nonwhites have been disallowed. Similar rules are supposed to apply to preferred positions in civil society. In a meritocracy, it has been believed until recently, individual capability should count...
Addressing a Boston anti-slavery audience in 1865, abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked, “What shall we do with the Negro?” The answer he provided was a favorite of the conservative economist Walter E. Williams, though if Douglass were to utter it today he would probably be condemned by Black Lives Matter and deplatformed from social media: ...
No Time to Die Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga ◆ Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Cary Joji Fukunaga ◆ Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ◆ Distributed by Universal Pictures The James Bond film series that began in 1962 is still going strong in this, its 25th edition. The latest installment is definitely a winner,...
Leonard Pillay’s 9mm pistol hasn’t left his side since July 9 of last year. “Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” the middle-aged mechanic admitted in an interview. “I haven’t got it on me when I sleep. But I promise you, it’s never far away. Never.” Pillay lives in a small house in Phoenix,...
Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman Doubleday 336 pp., $28.95 Aristotle’s observation that philosophy begins in wonder has, for many, conjured up an image of a curious child, bright-eyed and fascinated with the world around him. Similarly, in this book about the philosophical...
A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education ed. by Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzchild Encounter Books 336 pp., $28.99 Scholars increasingly treat the issue of race with kid gloves. As the cancel culture accelerates, race—always a sensitive topic—has become nearly taboo. Any serious exploration of the correlation of intelligence and race is...
Like a strange melody that keeps playing in my ear are four letters, PTSD, which seem increasingly to afflict American criminals. I suppose some shrink invented post-traumatic stress disorder; then ambulance-chasing lawyers picked it up, and finally the criminals themselves have discovered it. It is the quickest get-out-of-jail scheme since habeas corpus. We are...
The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America by Gabriel Winant Harvard University Press 368 pp., $35.00 Once upon a time, there were academic historians on whom the public could rely for help in accurately understanding the world in which we live. Scholars such as Samuel Eliot...
One recent morning an opinion piece by Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post arrived unbidden in my email inbox. “Should Putin act, it would arguably be the greatest provocation since the end of the Cold War,” Rubin claimed. “Like the Berlin Wall and the blockade of Berlin before that, movement into Ukraine would be...