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1 month ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Algis Valiunas |Mark Helprin |Edward Feser |William Voegeli
Since the dawn of the atomic age, when we gained the capacity to destroy everything there is, we have grown superficially accustomed to the possible end of civilized life—or even of all human life—on earth, blunting the edge of a wholesome and salutary fear. But, of course, to live with full, unremitting awareness of how precarious our condition really is would be intolerable, so a certain insouciance proves wholesome, and salutary, too.
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1 month ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Christopher Caldwell |Kyle Smith |Charles Kesler |William Voegeli
The amazing thing about Donald Trump’s arrival in office for his second term has been the sheer consequentiality of it. What felt like an inflection has proved a revolution. Dreams that seemed alive to some people just six months ago—transcending binary sexuality, for example—are dead and discredited. So are the state mechanisms by which such dreams were imposed—affirmative action, speech codes, and so on.
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1 month ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | William Voegeli |Jeffrey Anderson |Barry Strauss
Stoicism and ChristianityI appreciated Spencer Klavan’s thoughtful review of Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor and his recognition of my attempt to write a biography that made Marcus “seem human without making him seem any less impressive” (“The Last Great Stoic,” Fall 2024). Marcus was, I believe, an ordinary person with flaws who strove earnestly to improve himself—and succeeded.
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1 month ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Daniel Mahoney |Andrew E. Busch |Joseph M. Bessette |William Voegeli
No, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, or economic growth. Victorious technological civilization has simultaneously instilled in us a spiritual insecurity. Certainly, its gifts enrich, but enslave us as well. All is interests, we must not neglect our interests, all is a struggle for material things; but an inner voice faintly prompts us that we’ve lost something pure, elevated—and fragile. We have ceased to see the purpose.
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1 month ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Daniel Mahoney |Mark Helprin |William Voegeli |Charles Kesler
This fall, celebrity intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates moved on from demanding reparations for America’s racial sins to comparing Israel with the Jim Crow South. “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stronger and more intense than in Israel,” Coates writes in his new book, The Message.
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Dec 9, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Joseph Epstein |William Voegeli |Martha Bayles
Example, an old adage has it, is not proof. But then, apart from mathematics and litigation, proof is not everywhere required, while examples have various uses. “Example is the school of mankind,” wrote Edmund Burke, “and they learn at no other.” In his book Farnsworth’s Classical English Style (2020), Ward Farnsworth holds that “examples show how principles work, and the principles can be adapted to less dramatic settings.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Ian Johnson |William Voegeli |Simon Heffer
In the preface to his 1991 book, Communism, historian Richard Pipes wrote that “[t]his book is an introduction to Communism and, at the same time, its obituary.” Many scholars since then have attempted similar postmortems, ranging in tone from tragic to triumphalist. But in To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism, Sean McMeekin interrupts this funereal historiography with a fundamentally different argument.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | William Voegeli
There were two presidential campaigns in 2024: one between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and then one between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The first began to end, and the second began to take shape, during the Trump-Biden debate held on June 27. The story of that debate was President Biden, who looked and sounded dreadful.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Christopher Caldwell |Craig Kennedy |Martha Bayles |William Voegeli
Three days before his sweeping victory this fall, Donald Trump promised a crowd in Salem, Virginia that Election Day 2024 would be the most important day in the history of our country. What are we to make of that statement? On the one hand, it’s nonsense: Had this year’s election taken place in April 1865, it might not even have qualified as runner-up for most important day of the week.
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Nov 17, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Spencer Klavan |William Voegeli |Will Thibeau |Theodore Dalrymple
Essay by Spencer A. KlavanThe terrifying universe of The Three-Body Problem. Discussed in this essay:The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. Tor Books, 400 pages, $29.99 (cloth), $18.99 (paper)The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu, translated by Joel Martinsen. Tor Books, 512 pages, $31.99 (cloth), $19.99 (paper)Death’s End, by Cixin Liu,translated by Ken Liu. Tor Books, 608 pages,$31.99 (cloth), $19.99 (paper)3 Body Problem,created by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo.
