Category: Reviews

Home Reviews
fate, romance, Alternate Romantic Realities, Past Lives, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sliding Doors
Post

Alternate Romantic Realities

In Past Lives, circumstances separate two love-struck tweens but a supernatural fate reunites them. The theme disturbs the western sensibility that favors alternatives and individual autonomy.

Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises, A. N. Wilson
Post

A Deeper Thing Than Love

A. N. Wilson is extraordinary at discussing the faith of his many friends and acquaintances, and the religious odyssey that he presents is a joyful and hopeful one.

Prince Harming
Post

Prince Harming

Spare is a book of emotional spasms, broken down into bite-sized segments of staccato sentences expressing everything from extravagant griefs to lavish hatreds and saccharine love scenes, with every shade of angst, bathos, and exaltation in between.

When the Cure Is the Poison
Post

When the Cure Is the Poison

John Agresto is full of ideas about what needs to be done to fix the broken liberal arts tradition. Unfortunately, his proposed plan won’t work—they're too liberal.

Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert McNamara, Max Hastings
Post

Muddling the Missile Crisis

The Abyss, a pop history treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, revives unhistorical myths in an effort to chalk the whole thing up to American hysteria, and to portray the bumbling JFK as having masterfully handled the crisis.

C. Vann Woodward, New South, Old South, Jim Crow, historian
Post

Divided Loyalties

James Cobb admirably assesses the loyalties of C. Vann Woodward, one of the most influential historians of the 20th century, whose best-known books explored the rise of the New South and the emergence of the Jim Crow regime.

A Spark to Start a Wildfire
Post

A Spark to Start a Wildfire

Sound of Freedom is a beautifully crafted and passionately humane film about the darkest underbelly of contemporary life: the trafficking and sexual abuse of helpless children.

Freedom’s Penalties
Post

Freedom’s Penalties

In Obedience Is Freedom, Jacob Phillips illustrates how too much freedom can often mean unhappiness. Men are not made to endlessly self-create.

The Modern Myth of a Lockean Founding
Post

The Modern Myth of a Lockean Founding

America’s Philosopher posits that Americans in the 20th century weaponized John Locke for their own ideological ends and read Locke into the American founding. This has given Locke an outsized importance as a means to an ideological end.

What We Are Reading: August 2023
Post

What We Are Reading: August 2023

Immigration proponents make obvious contradictory claims. They repeat endlessly that recent immigrants are integrating just as fully as earlier immigrants did. Yet they also want to turn the idea that “America is a melting pot” into a prohibited microaggression. If it really is happening, why is it a moral crime to mention it? They lose...

Books in Brief: August 2023
Post

Books in Brief: August 2023

Short reviews of Danger Close! A Vietnam Memoir, by Phil Gioia, and Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet, by Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley.

Longing for the Sacred
Post

Longing for the Sacred

Though his portrayal of the Catholic saint is superficial at best, Padre Pio director Abel Ferrara's at least accomplish something, accidentally, by leading the film's star onto a redemptive path.

Empire’s Bloody End
Post

Empire’s Bloody End

In A Continent Erupts Ronald Spector analyzes the complex conflicts of East and Southeast Asia in the 10 years after the end of World War II.

A Colonial History of African-Americans
Post

A Colonial History of African-Americans

In African Founders, David Hackett Fischer asserts that the traditions of liberty, equality, and the rule of law often transcended the evils of slavery in early America and were embraced, with impressive results, by masters and slaves alike.

Books in Brief: April 2023
Post

Books in Brief: April 2023

Short reviews of Interventions 2020, by Michel Houellebecq, and The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great Power Rivalry Today, by Hal Brands.

Soldiers of Burden
Post

Soldiers of Burden

Outsourcing Duty tackles the issues that arise in countries where a large majority of citizens avoid military service and isolate themselves from the risks and moral responsibilities that soldiers face.

Zero Plus Ten
Post

Zero Plus Ten

Harald Jähner's Aftermath offers a panoramic view of the process of recovery for Germans in all occupation zones during the first 10 years after World War II.

Stan Evans: Unsung Hero of the Right
Post

Stan Evans: Unsung Hero of the Right

Despite his significant contributions to the post-WWII right in America, M. Stanton Evans is not as well-known as his many accomplishments warrant. Steven Hayward's new biography sets the record straight.

Four Women Against the Oxford Dons
Post

Four Women Against the Oxford Dons

In the 1930s and '40s, four female students at Oxford challenged the dons with an intellectually vigorous return to Aristotle and classical and medieval approaches to a philosophy of human action.