Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song lured many reviewers into divining it as a sort of psychological autobiography. Dylan’s analysis offered in the opening chapter on Bobby Bare’s “Detroit City” regarding the song’s protagonist, “He’s able to manufacture a…
It’s been a long year. But in the darkness spread by the many challenges our country faces, this Christmas season shines more brightly by contrast. We at The American Spectator consider ourselves blessed to share great writing that sheds light…
Faith Still Moves Mountains: Miraculous Stories of the Healing Power of Prayer By Harris Faulkner (Broadside Books, 288 pages, $29) Faith is a powerful force that enables us to transcend grief, illness, addiction, and depression. This is the central claim…
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century By Beverly Gage (Viking, 864 pages, $45) J. Edgar Hoover held on to power for too long. From 1924 until his death in 1972, during the administrations of eight…
Years ago, I read a novel that impressed me deeply. But I couldn’t recommend it to anyone because it was in Norwegian, the English translation long out of print. I’m happy to report that you can now get the English…
Arthur Miller: American Witness By John Lahr (Yale University Press, 264 pages, $26) Art imitates life, and that is certainly true in the case of the playwright Arthur Miller (1915–2005), whose personal and professional life defined and added verisimilitude to…
The thesis of Cynthia Farahat’s The Secret Apparatus (Bombardier Books) is that the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in Cairo in the 1920s by an Egyptian, Hassan al-Banna, is the principal force behind the modern Islamic campaign for world domination….
Anyone who doubts detective fiction can be high literature will be persuaded otherwise by just the prologue of Andrew Klavan’s second Cameron Winter mystery, A Strange Habit of Mind. A terrified man, Adam, in his apartment sends a short text,…
When we last left Marshall Armstrong — more famously known as Little Big Horn survivor George Armstrong Custer — in Armstrong Rides Again!, the Latin American island where he served as army commander was melting from volcano lava and sinking…
Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy Henry Kissinger (Penguin, 528 pages, $36) Leadership is a somewhat vague concept. But like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s quip about obscenity, we know it when we see it. Henry Kissinger, now in his…