Category: REVIEW

Utopia: The Perennial Heresy

For the Utopian, a unified and uniform mass of humanity is enabled by the “abolition of war,” which in turn can only be safeguarded by a “supranational agency, ultimately a world government.”

Daphne Blooms in New York

Strauss’s opera prizes innocence in a time of chaos, beauty over disorder, and the transcendence of suffering. Daphne is precisely the work that could lend itself to the revitalization of an opera company.

Let the Music Resound at Palm Beach Opera!

A step up from the very literal productions usually seen here, this co-production by Opéra de Monte-Carlo and San Francisco Opera removes the action from its usual eighteenth-century setting to the fateful year of 1914.

Millennials Unmoored

Bauerlein demonstrates in clear, elegant prose that a common frame of reference no longer exists, and the result for Millennials and Gen Z has been a disaster.

A Prussian Confederate

One only hopes that the current wave of political masochism in America will crest and that elites will understand that you cannot build a stable future by destroying the past or demonizing your heritage.

A Manifesto of Architectural Hope

A Manifesto of Architectural Hope

Alain de Botton’s book tells us that we can and should regain hope about the future of our homes and cities. Architecture has been in a sad state in the West for many decades, but there are also glimmers of promise.

December 21, 2022
Literature that Defied the Nazi Regime

Literature that Defied the Nazi Regime

Scholdt pays tribute to both the aesthetic achievements and the courage of writers who were persecuted and ostracized during the Nazi era. He also considers the significance of their resistance in the Nazi years for our own tumultuous times.

December 19, 2022
More Kicks to Arthur Bryant’s Corpse

More Kicks to Arthur Bryant’s Corpse

Through scarcely credible naïveté, Robinson seems to believe that he has disposed of Bryant’s ethical pretensions. His hubris calls to mind those self-destructive British Labour parliamentarians who elicited the jibe that, when granted a choice of weapons, they always selected boomerangs.

December 18, 2022
A Dangerous Empire

A Dangerous Empire

Nothing seems wrong with a discerning use of Netflix. But the company’s final goals, Chanot wishes to remind us, are anything but harmless and are bound to destroy the virtues we care to preserve within our families.

December 14, 2022
Remaking the West from the Broken Pieces of WWI

Remaking the West from the Broken Pieces of WWI

The film does a manful job depicting conditions from which few people escape alive, and no soul remains unscarred.

December 11, 2022
Faith for Doubters

Faith for Doubters

Brinkmann’s book is a respectful, thoughtful tome seeking to question faith honestly. He freely admits that he is simultaneously sceptical on issues of faith and belief and deeply fascinated by religion.

December 7, 2022
Radical Sympathies

Radical Sympathies

Henry James praised Ivan Turgenev because, though the man possessed a pessimistic streak, in his novels he painted tender pictures that bled sympathy for all.

December 5, 2022
FORGOTTEN CLASSICS: <br><em>Sir Gawain</em> and the Christmas Night

FORGOTTEN CLASSICS:
Sir Gawain and the Christmas Night

Sir Gawain is a dramatic tale of a knight’s bravery and chastity in the face of temptation and, crucially, the distinctive experience of grace and forgiveness that Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection has made possible.

November 26, 2022
Economics and the Future of the Right

Economics and the Future of the Right

DiLorenzo’s ‘Politically Incorrect Guide’ comes at a time in which the majority of young people in the West are predicted to experience less freedom and economic prosperity than their parents or grandparents enjoyed.

November 25, 2022
A <em>Lady Macbeth</em> To Die For Conquers New York

A Lady Macbeth To Die For Conquers New York

Conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson’s deft, efficient gestures captured the performance with balance between its driving sonic eccentricities and subtler and more contemplative passages.

November 22, 2022
When the Law Defines What It Means to Be Human

When the Law Defines What It Means to Be Human

Today, it is all too common to prize self-sufficiency as a virtue—a virtue by nature inaccessible to the sick and to the disabled, to pregnant women and to the elderly, and to children of any age.

November 17, 2022
Carl Trueman on Our Strange New World

Carl Trueman on Our Strange New World

How did we get here? As Trueman explains it, three intertwining concepts and their origins must be understood to grasp our current culture: expressive individualism, the sexual revolution, and our social imaginary.

November 10, 2022