Claremont Review of Books

2 months 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.

2 months 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.

2 months ago | claremontreviewofbooks.com | Jeffrey Anderson |Barry Strauss |Gary Saul Morson

Joe Biden abused the presidential pardoning power to a degree that is perhaps unprecedented in American history. In a naked act of nepotism, he pardoned his convicted son Hunter for “those offenses against the United States which he has committed,” as well as for those he “may have committed or taken part in,” over more than a decade-long period spanning most of Biden’s second vice-presidential term and almost all of his sole presidential term.

2 months 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.

2 months 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.