A Review of Buckley
Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited William F. Buckley Jr. biography will leave conservatives disappointed.
Book Reviews
A Review of Buckley
Sam Tanenhaus’s biography of William F. Buckley has certain limitations, but it captures the character of conservatism’s founding father.
Book Review
America’s colleges and universities face crises from multiple directions—and the only path forward is innovating out of this mess.
A Review of The Affirmative Action Myth
Color-blind meritocracy and legal equality are more effective policies for promoting black advancement than the grievance culture of racial preferences.
Past Reviews
A Review of Plato and the Tyrant
James Romm turns Plato's Syracusan project into a gripping read, for good reasons and bad.
A Review of The Spy and the State
A new history deftly explores the complex relationship between Americans and the intelligence community but with a dire warning.
A Review of Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service
Journalists can write sympathetic profiles of individual government employees, but that does not legitimize the administrative state’s broader apparatus.
A Review of Man-Devil
Bernard Mandeville addressed the relationship between economics and morality and gave an answer no one wanted to hear.
A Review of Money, Lies, and God
Often, the kind of rhetoric that sells books doesn't contribute to healthy political discourse.
A Review of A Front Row Seat at the End of History
A new collection of writing from M. L. R. Smith and the late David Martin Jones reveals insights about the threats to the global order built by the West.
A Review of Maternal Ambivalence
We shouldn't need a psychotherapist to tell us that it's okay to have some negative feelings about maternity.
A Review of Contending for American Nationhood
A new book examines early debates on American adaptation of the common law and what it meant for national identity.
A Review of Gettysburg: The Tide Turns
A new “oral history” captures the tragedy of Gettysburg, even as it misses some facts.
A Review of Seven Things You Can't Say About China
Senator Tom Cotton’s book is a tacit admission that more than 50 years of American policies toward China have failed.
A Review of In Covid's Wake
The Covid pandemic showed the tension between our modern commitment to science and our liberal-democratic ideas of toleration.
A Review of Liberty as Independence
Quentin Skinner’s book is a powerful reminder of the old adage that “no cause is ever lost because no cause is ever really won."