History

“Who sets the tone of a culture?,” asked Ayn Rand. “A small handful of men: the philosophers.” According to Robert Tracinski, many of Rand’s followers have taken this to mean that efforts toward a better future should focus on university humanities departments. But, in his latest book, Tracinski argues that this is only part of the story.

Isabel Paterson considered herself the last survivor of a golden age. But she helped bequeath to us a vision of that free world—and not just a vision, but something more precious: a rational intellectual argument for it.

Robert Pierce Forbes’s painstaking research into the writing and revision of Notes on the State of Virginia is impressive and valuable. But his conjectures about Thomas Jefferson’s goals in writing those portions of the book that still stain the great man’s reputation only perpetuate the mysteries.

Despite some faults, Straight Line Crazy does an excellent job of bringing to modern audiences the harsh reality of how governments, even in wealthy, developed countries, can ride roughshod over people’s rights, rich and poor alike.

Despite occasional oversights, Kevin Birmingham's The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece offers a dramatic and enlightening introduction to the complicated context in which one of literature’s greatest and most horrifying novels was created.

The heroes of philosophy from Thales to Rand—and preeminently Aristotle—have provided us with a priceless gift. In sundry forms, heroes support human life. Nowhere is this truth more powerful than with the heroes of philosophy.

Despite some of Hamilton’s surprising errors, such as his support for mercantilism, his programs prevented the new republic from floundering, as Dianne Durante has shown. Hamilton is worthy of our admiration, and so is Dr. Durante for having done such a fine job of bringing Hamilton and his policies to life.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrates the imagined virtue of staying where you are born. Explorers’ Day would celebrate the very real virtues of investigating the world, discovering new places and possibilities, and taking the bold steps necessary to improve human life.

Written in the final days of his life, as Herschensohn learned of the arrests of brave friends, A Profile of Hong Kong was left unfinished, and it ends on a tragic note, with a run-on sentence that reads like a wail of grief.

Jews have been irrationally blamed for many crimes. In reality, their “sin” was to birth the first faith-based, supernatural religion to deeply influence Western history.