George McKenna

Historian Perry Miller began his monumental reexamination of American Puritan thought with Orthodoxy in Massachusetts (1933). In patient labor over the next thirty years, Miller sketched out the lineaments of the uniquely configured Protestantism that shaped what he called “the New England . . . . Continue Reading »

In the preface to Crisis of the House Divided , his 1959 work on the Lincoln“Douglas debates of 1858, Harry Jaffa, who had just turned forty, announced that the book was to be “the first part of a two“part study of Lincoln’s political philosophy.” He already had in mind . . . . Continue Reading »

Imagine a new land colonized by peoples from many countries. They push aside the natives, who offer varying degrees of violent resistance and are put down with merciless force. Imagine that after a perennial series of skirmishes between colonial powers, one of them finally wins”but then loses . . . . Continue Reading »

When Abraham Lincoln entered a nearly empty Richmond, Virginia, on April 4, 1865, black dock workers crowded around him, hailing him as a messiah. Shocked, Lincoln said, “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him.” Despite Lincoln’s injunction, . . . . Continue Reading »

Jefferson: Political Writings Edited by Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball Cambridge University Press. 623 pp. $59.95 American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People By Jean M. Yarbrough University Press of Kansas. 256 pp. $35 Thomas Jefferson and the Education of a Citizen Edited . . . . Continue Reading »

It is of course the case that only God knows what will happen in the next century and the next millennium. But we human beings are created with an irrepressible disposition toward the future, as well as a capacity to recall the past. In the last year we published a “millennium series” of . . . . Continue Reading »

Alexander Hamilton, American by richard brookhiser simon & schuster, 240 pages, $16.99 National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser has followed up his successful 1996 biography of George Washington (Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington) with a biography of Alexander Hamilton. . . . . Continue Reading »

A Thread of Years By John Lukacs Yale University Press. 481 pp. $30 Historian John Lukacs has written a year-by-year meditation on the twentieth century, or most of it anyway. The book starts in 1901 and ends in 1969, when, according to Lukacs, Anglo-American civilization finally petered out. Each . . . . Continue Reading »

American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America’s Most Powerful Church by Charles R. Morris. Times Books, 511 pages, $27.50. Social historian and commentator Charles Morris’ new study of the development and current situation of the Catholic Church in America is an important, . . . . Continue Reading »

Love and Saint Augustine By Hannah Arendt. Edited by Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark. University of Chicago Press, 233 pages, $22.50. I first met Hannah Arendt in 1964, while I was writing my dissertation on her political thought. I called her up and asked if I could interview . . . . Continue Reading »