Archive

Peter Berger, who died on June 27 at age eighty-eight, ranked among the most distinguished sociological thinkers and public intellectuals of the past half century. His contributions to his...

Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter? by randall balmer? basic, 304 pages, $27.99 Historians generally agree that the best that can be said for the presidency of Jimmy Carter...

Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy by Andrew Preston Knopf, 832 pages, $37.50 America, G. K. Chesterton famously observed, is “a nation...

American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation ? by Michael Kazin Knopf, 329 pages, $27.95 Radical historians are notoriously untrustworthy analysts of the American experience because their ideological...

Everyone thinks ideologically, but no one wants to admit it. Most of our responses to events in public life are immediate, firm, and quite untouched by reflection. When I...

Inequality is, always and everywhere, a fact of economic life. It is also, always and everywhere, a recurring subject of moral controversy. Americans have for the most part avoided...

This issue marks the beginning of First Things ’ twenty-second year of publication, and every new publishing cycle invites reflection on what it is that we are about. And...

Americans like to think of their history as a success story. And so, by most measures, and for most people most of the time, it has been. Except, of...

Americans have always been an intensely patriotic people. Most of them love their country without reserve and without need for reflection. Devotion to the nation and its symbols is...

A habit of pessimism, it seems, comes with the conservative territory. It’s been more than half a century since Clinton Rossiter described American conservatism as the “thankless persuasion,” but...

Because of Christ: Memoirs of a Lutheran Theologianby carl e. braaten eerdmans, 210 pages, $18 Lutherans are a theologically odd lot. They started the Reformation, but they have never...

Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism by George H. Nash ISI Books, 400 pages, $27.95 n Conservatism in the United States begins at a rhetorical...

The American Future: A History by Simon Schama Ecco, 400 pages, $29.99 It’s not easy for an author to disqualify his book from serious consideration with his first sentence,...

Richard John Neuhaus had a big life, but his day-by-day world was a small one. There was his comfortable, though hardly luxurious, apartment in the townhouse occupied by the...

Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829“1877 by Walter A. McDougall Harper, 787 pages, $34.95 American history is very popular these days, but histories of America”comprehensive accounts...