Reviews
Politics & Rights, Reviews, Science & Technology
The Case for Nukes: How We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, Open, and Magnificent Future by Robert Zubrin
Thomas Walker-Werth April 3, 2023
The Case for Nukes is a refreshingly rational overview, not just of the merits of nuclear power, but of the potentially wonderful future of the human race and the ideas we must embrace and reject if we want to create a better future for ourselves and our descendants.
Education & Parenting, Reviews
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
Tim White March 28, 2023
How to Read a Book was incredibly important and valuable when it was first published in 1940, and it remains so today. It’s so packed with clear, accessible, and oft-overlooked wisdom that even expert readers will find it an indispensable addition to their libraries.
Arts & Culture, Reviews
What’s Love Got to Do With It? Directed by Shekhar Kapur
What’s Love Got to Do With It? is a well-written and refreshingly thoughtful film that shows the crucial importance of honesty and independent thinking in achieving happiness. It is a sensitive yet incisive study of the clash between Islamic and Western cultures—and between collectivism and individualism.
History, Reviews
The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class That Tried to Win the Cold War by Philip Oltermann
Timothy Sandefur February 28, 2023
The Stasi Poetry Circle offers an unusual glimpse of the relationship between communist totalitarianism and the poetic impulses of both its victims and their victimizers.
Arts & Culture, Philosophy, Reviews
Babylon 5: Pioneering, Philosophic Science Fiction
Thomas Walker-Werth February 21, 2023
Babylon 5 is a unique science-fiction series that tells an epic story rich in philosophic ideas and moral messages. These make it timeless and well worth watching for anyone interested in complex drama.
Philosophy, Reviews
Knock at the Cabin, Written, Produced, and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Knock at the Cabin depicts the vile notion that it is moral to sacrifice the person you love most—your highest value—for the benefit of others and/or to appease God.
History, Politics & Rights, Reviews
And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham
Timothy Sandefur February 13, 2023
What many of Lincoln's contemporaries—and many today—mistook for paradoxes or even contradictions more often reflected the prudence of a leader facing the horrendous task of guiding the United States toward a philosophic principle when unprecedented bloodshed made it sometimes seem safer to disregard that principle.
Politics & Rights, Reviews
Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama
Michael Dahlen January 25, 2023
Recently, a growing chorus of voices has become increasingly hostile to free speech. Certain speech, we are told, must be suppressed in order to combat “hate speech,” stop misinformation, and “protect democracy.” But, as Jacob Mchangama explains in his book, Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, these arguments are not new.
Arts & Culture, Reviews
This Afterlife: Selected Poems by A. E. Stallings
Timothy Sandefur December 3, 2022
A. E. Stallings’s distinctive poetry succeeds because it merges a conscientious focus on meaningful content—saying relevant and powerful things about human experiences—with a painstaking attention to formal design. The results are masterpieces of integration.
Good Living, Reviews
Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks by Alexandra York
Andrew Bernstein November 21, 2022
In Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks, York draws our attention to two areas where many could benefit from focusing more and more regularly: the deep need for ongoing spiritual renewal—and numerous specific means by which to attain it.