“A U.S. dollar bill, turned 90 degrees and tattooed top-to-bottom, edge-to-edge, with Psalm 23. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Right next to it, a small slip of paper, creased and soft, covered with six digit numbers. What did they mean?” Thomas Mullaney found these items in his deceased […]
I Won’t Drink to That: A review of Malör
Did you hear the one about the Russian Jew from Minnesota who walked into a Chicago bar to sell the owner Swedish booze? Sure, it sounds like the set-up of a bad joke, but it’s a true story and one entertainingly told by journalist Josh Noel in Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled […]
Tale of a Cocktail: A review of The Fren...
“History is bunk,” according to Henry Ford. But there is an irony to that quotation—the motor industries patriarch and presidential candidate did not say it. No, when asked about his views on foreign affairs in 1916 the isolationist plutocrat grumbled….(Read more)
Fringe Benefits: A review of ‘Wide Awake
Marching Proud Boys wearing black Fred Perry polos and getting into fisticuffs with Antifa. Anonymous hacktivists wearing creepy, plastic Guy Fawkes masks and messing with the computers of law enforcement and other organizations they think corrupt or cruel. Oath Keepers proclaiming to be “Guardians of the Republic” and traveling to the U.S. Capitol with paramilitary […]
Guerrillas in Their Midst: A review of T...
The history of the Civil War frequently is told through its biggest battles and personalities: the Battle of Bull Run. Antietam. Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson Davis. U.S. Grant. Robert E. Lee. Certain big moments inevitably figure into the narrative. South Carolina’s secession. The attack on Fort Sumter. The Emancipation Proclamation. Booth’s assassination of Lincoln….(Read more)
Conservatism’s enduring debates
Not quite thirty years ago, I sketched out a book-length history of the American political right. I had read and enjoyed George Nash’s and Jay Sigler’s tomes, but felt they were both a little dated and had excluded essential thinkers and developments. I also felt that academe, which I was in training to join, had given the […]