Paul Kingsnorth believes that the Machine Age has replaced the four P's of traditional culture (the past, the people, place, and prayer) with four S's: science, self, sex, and the screen. Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, by Paul Kingsnorth. (348 pages, Random House, 2025) Paul Kingsnorth is right about much, and he [...]
Ronald Reagan’s version of conservatism was far more pro-government than was Barry Goldwater’s. Compassion, not liberty, was Reagan’s guide. This raises the question: To what extent is the success of modern political conservatism dependent upon the conservation of liberal, even progressive, reforms? The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism [...]
What is America? Are we a nation or an idea? A recent essay by one Colin Woodard contends that we must choose one or the other. More than that, Woodard chooses to make his choice very clear, while also claiming to know the choices of President Donald Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance. America as a [...]
Historian Walter McDougall is that rare "twofer": a wonderful writer of history and a wonderful lecturer. In this book, he combines essential tips for the writer with a series of uniformly sparkling essays that range from the era of the American Revolution to the present day. Gems of American History: The Lecturer’s Art, by Walter [...]
Charles Murray may well have been both a well-educated agnostic and a happy one, but today he believes that the “inescapable conclusion” is that “a God created a universe that would enable life to exist.” And in his new book, he seeks to nudge secularists along the same route that he has taken to this [...]
None of the pieces in this collection are excerpts from David McCullough's many books. And none are culled from anything that might have been on its way to becoming an autobiography. They are simply essays, talks, and musings offered by David McCullough the writer, the student, the artist, and the reader. History Matters, by David [...]
The original progressives presumed that a permanent federal bureaucracy would be politically neutral. That hasn’t been the case for a very long time. Therefore, real progress today should lead to seriously trimming what is accurately called our administrative state and dramatically increasing the number of political appointees. While the latest round of “no kings” rallies [...]
"You are holding in your hands one of the most important dystopian novels ever written,” claims the introduction to the new edition of Jean Raspail's controversial 1973 novel, "The Camp of the Saints," an alternately brutal and comedic savaging of guilt-ridden Westerners, who allow their civilization to disappear by welcoming mass migration from the Third [...]
Sportswriter Jane Leavy believes that baseball is in trouble, but she also thinks she knows how to fix it. And yet there is a notion that lurks here and there in her new book: Maybe, just maybe, the game is not fixable—at least not fixable in the sense of its ever being restored to its [...]
Clearly, Frank Meyer was a major player in the modern conservative movement in its early days. But the heart of Daniel J. Flynn's new book doesn’t really explain just how it was that its subject somehow “invented” conservatism. The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, by Daniel J. Flynn. (562 [...]
Who would have thought that a teacher might convince a student that living a virtuous life was both a challenge and an adventure? David Hein apparently has done just that in the classroom, and those classroom teachers who read his book might well come to learn from him and agree with him—and do the same [...]
Salena Zito's new book is less the story of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, than it is the lengthier story of the 2024 campaign for the presidency. As such, it is also the story of the fight for a piece of America’s heartland, and for a key element of Mr. Trump's [...]
The political circus that rode into Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925 must have been something, even though its conclusion was anti-climactic. Still, the case lives on, as it has for a century now. Did life come from nothing or something: or from Someone? The summer of 2025 should not come to an end [...]
R. Emmett Tyrrell’s short version of American history from the 1960s to the 2020s can essentially be reduced to this: periods of Episodic Chaos followed by periods of Episodic Calm. In his recent book, he asks whether we can finally be free of these alternating historical episodes. How Do We Get Out of Here? by [...]