“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 ›
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 ›
Jenny Taylor’s Saving Journalism (Pippa Rann Books, UK, 2025) ably chronicles the rise and fall of public interest reporting, and what we have lost as the powerful can now operate with fewer restraints. She notes how western culture’s journalistic innovators until about 1900 were “typically outsiders, religious dissenters who lived by a specific narrative: a narrative of reality and of Read More ›
December is midway between the end of the baseball season in October and spring training reawakening in a Florida or Arizona February, so here’s a baseball book that can keep us warm at night. Jane Leavy’s Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It (Grand Central Publishing, 2025) includes many proposals including my favorite: Read More ›
Thanksgiving week is the best time of year for homeless persons looking for food handouts—but why are they homeless? Addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness are leading causes, but Michael Ullman’s Household Deformation: The Rise and Permanence of Modern Homelessness (National Homeless Information Project, 2025) also shows the impact of family non-formation and deformation. Divorce and loneliness contribute to an increase in Read More ›
Intellectuals who paid attention when Molly Worthen became a Christian—see Olasky Books for August—should note as well the publication this month of Charles Murray’s Taking Religion Seriously (Encounter). In it the formerly agnostic scholar gives reasons, including “the brute facts of the big bang,” for his new belief in God. Much of the book details Murray’s exploration of Christian claims. Read More ›
Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish new year’s celebration—begins on September 22, so this is a good time to review four new Judaism-related books, starting with the entertaining Eminent Jews (Henry Holt, 2025). David Denby offers four long but readable chapters on Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer, and Leonard Bernstein. The Brooks section is best with its specific detail of how the genius of Read More ›
This month is named after the emperor Augustus, but I’d rather think of it as a month for Augustine, the saintly theologian who died almost 1600 years ago. Augustine’s City of God, 1300 or so pages in modern translations, is a lot to lug to a desk, so I recommend Gregory Lee’s The Essential City of God: A Reader and Read More ›
This summer I’ve read two ambitious books that succeed, two that partly succeed, and an unpretentious one that holds true to its roots. Let’s start with Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump (Forum, 2025). Molly Worthen walks us through four centuries of mystery history: Some leaders gain followers by charm but charisma is more Read More ›
Is anything new under the sun except books? My own preference by oceans and lakes is for books that raise energy levels. Others prefer calming waves. So here are two of the former and two of the latter. Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway (Viking, 2024) shows the power of DNA. Harkaway is the son of masterful British spy novelist David Read More ›