Herb London’s newest book, a relentlessly critical view of American morals and culture in the 1990’s, makes two pivotal observations.  First, the moral deterioration that journalists associate with the Republican “decade of greed” (the 80’s) actually took place, partly thanks to the media, in the 90’s.  Second, the major impact of the Clinton presidency was...

David C. Downing’s study of C.S. Lewis and his conversion to Christianity in his early 30’s offers more than the title might suggest.  What we are given is not a repetition of the well-known narrative from Surprised by Joy, in which Lewis recounts his journey from youthful atheism to Christian belief 15 years later.  Nor...

Both of these books are written by young, self-styled conservatives; both demonstrate indisputably the unfounded charges made against the “right” by the media and academics; both easily devastate the biased and factually inaccurate statements about Republicans, conservatives, and the American past and present that emanate from the cultural left.  The TV personalities Ann Coulter goes...

In this densely composed study, E. Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars and outspoken Catholic traditionalist, tries to explain why American inner cities have been physically and socially devastated.  Investigating four metropolitan areas that he knows well—Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston—Jones argues that established urban neighborhoods did not deteriorate simply because of economic crises or...

“There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.”  —Ralph Waldo Emerson What helps set this study apart is its still largely verboten subject.  Joseph Scotchie devotes his attention to that part of the American right that Lee Edwards, Jonathan M. Schoenwald, and William Rusher...

Linda Raeder’s study of John Stuart Mill as a critic of religion and, more specifically, of Christian beliefs and morals is heavily researched and densely composed.  Although carefully and gracefully framed, it is too conceptually demanding to please dull-witted movement conservatives or politically correct academics.  Those who disregard this study, however, are missing a devastating...

In this impressive collection of speeches and essays reflecting decades of somber thought, John A. Howard, senior fellow in educational philosophy at the Howard Center, takes stock of changing American manners and values.  What makes these comments especially noteworthy is the distance between Howard’s accomplishments and the irremediably “toxic” culture that he criticizes.   The...

Reading this account of David Brock’s journey from the “bigoted” right to a left-liberal politics that allows him to embrace his homosexuality was no kind of pleasure.  Luminous observations in the book are few and far between, while betwixt them are ponderous revelations pertaining to David’s sexual awakening, his relations with a “blond blue-eyed dreamboat...

“If anyone wish to migrate to another village, and if one or more who live in that village do notwish to receive him, if there he only one who objects he shall not move there.”         —The Salic Law, c. 490 In this commentary on the American experiment, Michael Barone declares that...

This compact and thoughtful biography by the director of American Studies at Oglethorpe University underscores a recurrent problem affecting the reputations of conservative social thinkers. Even those who once enjoyed well-deserved celebrity cease to be widely studied after they are gone. Save for the interest of devoted disciples with quite limited media access, the contemporary...

According to Angela D. Dillard, “women and minority conservatives have begun to alter irrevocably the tone and complexion of contemporary conservatism.” Despite the leftist affinity of most gays, blacks, Hispanics, and self described feminists, “pariah minorities”—whom Dillard views as belonging to larger “outcast” groups—have come to identify with the American right. Consisting of independent (though...

A. D. Harvey’s study of art and war, while noting the suffering caused by the European wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, highlights the artistic and spiritual creativity released by these struggles. He regards the Great War, unlike World War II (which produced for the most part “tired accents”), as an exhilarating contest, which...

This “celebration” of his intense love affair with America will not likely teach Norman Podhoretz’s devotees anything new. For the most part, it incorporates material that can be found in earlier autobiographical writings and in Podhoretz’s other published recollections about life in New York literary circles. My Love Affair With America includes an extended description...

In recent months, several works have appeared that throw light on the attitudes and concerns of various rightist movements lacking the imprimatur of an established right. While it is hard to generalize about the disparate thinkers and groups featured in these books, they are alike in having no relationship to the American right. Also characteristic...

Like the Roman cursus honorum, the ascending path of neoconservative success is carefully prescribed. Instead of the progress from aedile to consul, however, the journey leads through hackwork up to the glories of publishing with Basic Books, appearing on TV talk shows, and gracing the mastheads of neocon magazines. David Frum managed to move through...

        “A people still, whose common ties are gone; Who, mixed with every race, are lost in none.”—George Crabbe Kevin MacDonald’s study of the Jewish people in sociobiological perspective will not likely help his career, for reasons having nothing to do with the author’s scholarship or his accumulation of pertinent evidence. While...

A wash in reviews of Cornwell’s portrait of Pius XII, I felt surfeited by the book even before it arrived in the mail. To call this biography unflattering is meiosis. John Lukacs is right to say that, while Cornwell’s production is being featured by the History Book of the Month Club, history itself is what...

Robert Weissberg produced the present volume, on the concept and practice of empowerment, almost simultaneously with another monograph, on tolerance, published last year. Both studies highlight the difference between a political ideal and its grim result—that is, between what people are told the ideal consists of and what they ultimately get. In Political Tolerance, Weissberg...

        “When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking, or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.” —John Adams...

The introductory chapter of The Shadow University contains a powerful indictment of contemporary higher education. Kors and Silverglate get it right when they characterize university administrators as “careerists who have made a Faustian deal.” They are correct as well about the professorial, political, and cultural pressures that have turned institutions of learning into conduits of...

James Chace’s biography of Dean J Acheson is a generally interesting book dealing with a provocative figure. What makes it less than engrossing is the predictability of Chace’s left-liberal judgments. Because of his pervasive bias, he never surprises: Republicans in the 1920’s were heartless plutocrats and dimwitted isolationists, against the working man and for tariffs....

Robert Weissberg’s study of tolerance will not bring him academic good will, and the drab appearance of this volume will not attract a sufficient number of potentially favorable readers to make its author justly famous. So much the worse! The book is written with flair, even occasional humor, and offers riveting arguments regarding the changing...

From the rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other vehicles of low-octane conservatism, it seems that Tamar Jacoby has produced a work for the ages. Like earlier marvels by Dinesh D’Souza, John J. Miller, and Francis Fukuyama, this study was made possible by funds flowing from neocon foundations, a gesture thoughtfully repaid by...

Albert S. Lindemann has touched raw nerves with Esau’s Tears. Playing on the rabbinic legend that the Messiah will come only when Jacob’s elder brother ceases to lament being cheated of his birthright—i.e., when the gentile nations no longer feel hatred for Jacob’s descendants — Lindemann offers a vue d’ensemble of modern anti-Semitism as a...

In his book on declining social morality and the transformations of liberal ideology, Brad Stetson goes after deserving targets. He unmasks the liberalism that holds the media, universities, and the publishing industry in thrall and stresses the will to total domination that accompanies liberal concerns about racism, sexism, self-actualization, and the costs of low self-esteem....

        “Internationalism is a luxury which only the upper classes can afford; the common people are hopelessly bound to their native shores.” —Benito Mussolini Walter A. McDougall, a professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, presents useful truths about the history of American foreign policy. The United States, he correctly...

        “A perfect democracy is the most shameless thing in the world.” —Edmund Burke For some time now it has been the opinion of European political theorists that right and left have become antiquated points of reference. Allegedly, these terms, archaic by the time of the Cold War, were kept in use...

        “Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.” —Seneca The correspondence on the origins of the Cold War between John Lukacs and George Kennan, who have been friends for more than four decades, is not entirely unknown to fans of either. Much of it was printed last year in American Heritage,...