The Striver’s Curse
A review of Arthur C. Brooks’s new book, ‘From Strength to Strength.’
Ari David Blaff
· 6 min read
Review
A collection of 126 posts
Go Ask Beatrice: Notes on a Dishonest Decade
An outstanding new book tells the story of a wildly successful literary hoax. But it was just one of many.
Kevin Mims
· 29 min read
Children of the Counter-Revolution
Sexual liberty reconsidered.
Cathy Young
· 16 min read
What a Survivalist Reality TV Show Can Teach Us About the Human Condition
What makes 'Alone' endlessly fascinating and deeply moving is the mirror it holds up to our broken lives.
Jacob Howland
· 9 min read
Douglas Murray's War on the West—A Review
If 'The Strange Death of Europe' was a requiem for a stricken continent, 'War on the West' is intended to be an act of defiance.
Gisa Tunbridge
· 9 min read
Washington’s Hidden History
Kirchick’s book is a reminder of a shameful past, but its very existence is also evidence of the progress that the West’s democracies have made in the years since.
Fred Litwin
· 10 min read
Israel’s Perilous Moment, Then and Now
Herf tells the complicated and often surprising story of the internal political struggles in Western capitals, as well as in the halls of the United Nations, that erupted at the end of the Second World War.
Sol Stern
· 14 min read
Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style Revisited
Hofstadter argued that McCarthyism was simply the latest iteration of a longstanding American tradition.
Michael J. Totten
· 9 min read
The Tragedy of American Diplomacy: A Rebuttal
Williams, W. A. (1962). The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. New York: Dell Pub. Co. When the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) pinned Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine on NATO’s “imperialist expansionism,” many policymakers and journalists on both sides of the political spectrum lambasted the organization for its half-hearted
Niranjan Shankar
· 15 min read
Revolution Betrayed
A review of The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism by Matthew Continetti, Basic Books, 496 pages (April 2022) “So inevitable and yet so completely unforeseen” was Alexis de Tocqueville’s verdict on the French Revolution. Much the same can be said of Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of
Brian Stewart
· 15 min read
Piketty’s Progress
A review of A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty, Belknap Press, 288 pages (April 2022) As I write this, the city of Rotterdam is considering a request to dismantle one of its historic bridges to grant Jeff Bezos’s super-yacht (too monstrous for normal ports) safe passage to
Jared Marcel Pollen
· 10 min read
‘Dissident Philosophers’—A Review
A review of Dissident Philosophers: Voices Against the Political Current of the Academy, edited by T. Allan Hillman and Tully Borland. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 320 pages (November, 2021) Dissident Philosophers, edited by T. Allan Hillman of the University of South Alabama and independent scholar Tully Borland, is a compilation
Spencer Case
· 10 min read
Identity Mania
A review of The Identity Myth by David Swift. Constable, 320 pages (June 2022). In recent decades, anxieties afflicting Western democracies have arisen from new beliefs and conflicts about how citizens relate to each other—their relative status in society, notions of mutual respect, and the patterns that the past
John Lloyd
· 7 min read
Paradise Lost?
A review of The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s by Ellen Schrecker. University of Chicago Press, 616 pages (December 2021). The 1960s were the tipping point of postwar American history at which the conservativism of the previous decade evolved into an era of growing liberal consensus. Historian James
Roger L. Geiger
· 9 min read
Fatal Vision: Joel Coen’s ‘Macbeth’
In Shakespeare’s play, the Weïrd Sisters undoubtedly spur Macbeth toward evil by tempting him toward his dark ambition.
Marilyn Simon
· 8 min read