Discovery Institute

August, named after Augustus Caesar, is a good time to look at three books that apply lessons from ancient Rome. The best is Harry Sidebottom’s Those Who Are About to Die: A Day in the Life of a Roman Gladiator (Knopf, 2026). In it we can learn that the lean gladiators of Hollywood spectaculars were rare: A diet heavy on Read More ›

Jurgen Overhoff’s George Washington and Frederick the Great: Parallel Lives (Princeton, 2026) shows how two great leaders had different ethics of leadership that helped to create two different political cultures. Washington held himself accountable to Congress and saw the value of checks and balances: The US became a democratic republic. Frederick was an autocrat, and Prussia (which became the cornerstone Read More ›

Tomorrow is Flag Day, commemorating a Congressional resolution in 1777 that “The flag of the United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white.” Next Tuesday is the official publication date of Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome (Simon & Schuster). Maybe a coincidence, but Greg Jackson’s book is worth reading at a time when Read More ›

“A fine book to carry to the barricades.” That’s how Kirkus Reviews praised Bummerland: Ruin and Restoration in Trump’s New America by American Studies Professor Randolph Lewis (U. of Nebraska Press, 2026). But is this what we’ve come to in America: Teaching students and readers that the whole country is “a woodchipper for the soul”? Lewis plies his trade at The University Read More ›

Attention Seattle-area friends of Discovery Institute! We are pleased to announce a special opening-night film screening of the new feature-length film, The Story of Everything, which follows the eye-opening story told in Stephen Meyer’s 2021 bestseller, Return of the God Hypothesis (HarperOne). Set to release in hundreds of theaters across the country starting April 30th, this new film combines insightful Read More ›

In December I reviewed Jane Leavy’s audaciously-titled Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It. Howard Husock’s The Projects: A New History of Public Housing (NYU Press, 2025) comes from an academic publisher, which almost guarantees a boring title. A better title would have been: Make Me HUD Secretary: I Know What’s Wrong With “Affordable Read More ›

Karl Zinsmeister’s Sweet Charity (Mountain Marsh Media, 2026) has the semi-misleading subtitle Why private giving is so important to America (and must not be wrecked by politics). Semi-, that is, because while Zinsmeister’s opening chapter makes a cultural and political argument, the bulk of this delightful book is a travelogue of community-bolstering charities in Philadelphia and Florida, some wonderful, some Read More ›

Leo Damrosch’s Storyteller (Yale University Press, 2025) is a valentine to Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), whose life could have been co-designed by the novelist’s bipolar Jekyll and Hyde. Stevenson, best known for Treasure Island, combined a strict Scottish Presbyterian upbringing with a love of South Seas sensuousness. Damrosch describes how Stevenson rebelled against Christianity but “a gnawing sense of conscience Read More ›

Discovery Institute is pleased to announce that our annual Intelligent Design Education Day is returning to Spokane, Washington with thanks to our hosts at Great Northern University. The question at hand this year: Are humans merely another species in the animal kingdom? We share many physical traits, instincts, and even genetics with our fellow creatures. But is that all there is Read More ›