Samuel Gregg: Russell Kirk and Twentieth-Century American Conservatism

At The Public Discourse, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg reviews Bradley J. Birzer’s new book Russell Kirk: American Conservative. The book, Gregg writes, amply shows how “Kirk’s broad scope of interests was matched by genuine erudition that enabled him to see the connections between, for instance, culture and American foreign policy, or the significance of moral philosophy for one’s commitments in the realm of political economy.” Continue Reading...

The Tragedy of ‘Mockingjay’

“Mockingjay — Part 2,” the last film based on Suzanne Collins’ bestselling Hunger Games trilogy, opened this past weekend to high sales that, nevertheless, fell short of the other films in the series and industry expectations. Continue Reading...

Gertrude Himmelfarb ‘Threads the Needle’ on Lord Acton Biography

Biographers suffer from a myriad of temptations. Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her bibliography to the newly republished Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics, recalls how Acton’s first biographer, Ulrich Noack struggled mightily to reconcile contradictions and tensions in Acton’s thought and in doing so lost much of the man himself. Continue Reading...

Russell Kirk: Conservative, Humanist, Christian

Reading Bradley J. Birzer’s Russell Kirk, one might quibble with the subtitle: An American Conservative, but only because the term “conservative” has been worried like a rag doll in the maw of a Doberman puppy since Kirk first committed ink to paper on the conservative matter nearly 75 years ago. Continue Reading...

Review: ‘No Fear Allowed’

Fear is inevitable. We can either let it stop us in our tracks or use it as “feedback” that we have to do something to move forward. That’s the message in Laura Herring’s new book No Fear Allowed: A Story of Guts, Perseverance, & Making an Impact (Morgan James Publishing, 2015). Continue Reading...