Review by New York Times Review
UNDERLAND: A Deep Time Journey, by Robert Macfarlane. (Norton, $27.95.) A series of lyrical, unnerving explorations, from ancient forests to urban catacombs to caves of ice, that probe humanity's sometimes wondrous, often malign, relationship with the world beneath our feet. ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS, by Ocean Vuong. (Penguin Press, $26.) The poet's fiction debut is an experimental, highly poetic novel whose structural conceit is ostensibly a letter written from a son to his mother. The book is brilliant in the way it pays attention not to what our thoughts make us feel, but to what our feelings make us think. THE CONSERVATIVE SENSIBILITY, by George F. Will. (Hachette, $35.) Will, after a long career as a public intellectual, sums up his thinking about the meaning of conservatism in an argument that includes history, epistemology, culture, religion, politics and constitutionalism. GREATEST HITS, by Laura Barnett. (Europa, paper, $19.) A British novel that uses the creation of a retrospective album to explore a woman's tempestuous life in music. WOMEN'S WORK: A Reckoning With Work and Home, by Megan K. Stack. (Doubleday, $27.95.) As a foreign correspondent, Stack covered wars and reported from dozens of countries, but as a new parent she was overwhelmed. This enthralling account of her relationship with the women she hired to help her casts a self-critical eye on the often exploitative labor of motherhood. L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron," by Lucasta Miller. (Knopf, $30.) In the early 1820s, Landon's lightly erotic verse, published in a weekly gazette under the initials "L.E.L.," was all the rage in England. Miller's fascinating biography argues that the prolific poet, who died in exile in Africa, represents a "missing link" between the Romantics and the Victorians. LIFE OF DAVID HOCKNEY, by Catherine Cusset. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. (Other Press, paper, $15.99.) Cusset, a former French professor at Yale, entertainingly fashions a novel from the known facts about the life of Hockney, the artist whose paintings of poolside California now fetch astronomical sums. EXPOSED, by Jean-Philippe Blondei. Translated by Alison Anderson. (New Vessel, paper, $16.95.) This elegant novel explores the bond between a middle-aged teacher in the French provinces and the ex-student, now a famous painter, who asks him to pose. LIE WITH ME, by Philippe Besson. Translated by Molly Ringwald. (Scribner, $25.) A glimpse of a young man in a hotel leads the narrator of this tender, sensuous novel to recall his first love affair, as a teenager in rural France, with a taciturn farmer's son. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Russell Kirk's classic work, The Conservative Mind (7th rev. ed., 1986), stresses that conservatism is not an ideology. In the most considerable conservative book since Kirk's, longtime Washington Post columnist Will argues that in the U.S., conservatism is, in fact, eighteenth-century liberalism. The Declaration of Independence states its basic principle, that humans have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government is made by citizens to protect them in their practice of those rights; it is reactive, not activist. From the beginning, this conservative understanding was answered by another, that government could and should shape citizens for the sake of the collective good; in short, government makes citizens. This latter is the progressive mindset, and progressivism rather than liberalism is Will's name for it on account of the historic Progressive Era that gave rise to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and inspired such diverse acolytes as FDR, LBJ, Nixon, and Reagan. Conflict between the two conceptions of government courses through U.S. history, as Will demonstrates in philosophically informed chapters on presidential executive power, the judiciary, economics, national culture, education, and foreign policy. The richness and depth of Will's study is astonishing, and perhaps everyone interested in American politics and liberal democracy will find it enthralling. The best of its kind since Kirk? Definitely.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Will's fans will seek this out, while the sharp relevancy of his subject will ensure a flurry of high-profile media appearances that will bring in even more readers.--Ray Olson Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
It's time to return to the wisdom of the founding fathers, argues this sweeping political manifesto from Washington Post columnist Will (Men at Work). Will grounds his conservative ideology in the doctrine of inalienable rights rooted in unchanging human nature as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which prescribe limited government that protects life and liberty while leaving the pursuit of happiness up to self-reliant individuals. He contends that America went off-track with the rival ideology of progressivism, promoted by President Woodrow Wilson and his successors, which, Will argues, wants the state to shape human nature and control too many aspects of social and economic well-being; the result he sees is intrusive government, unsustainable health care and pension entitlements, corrupt preferments for elites, ill-advised military adventures, welfare dependency, and disintegrating families. Will centers the book on a rich, wide-ranging discussion of political philosophy written in graceful, aphoristic prose ("The redistributionist state inevitably distributes upward"). In many respects it's a challenge to today's populist conservatism as well: Will is pessimistic about the wisdom of voters who embrace populism and enjoins readers to embrace "the disruption [in demographics and cultural values]... that accompanies economic and cultural dynamism," which he sees Trump voters seeking to be shielded from. Both liberals and conservatives will find much to argue with here, but Will offers a formidable, thought-provoking riposte to conventional dogmas. Agent: Robert Barnett, Williams & Connolly. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Will (One Man's America) shares his vast knowledge of the history of American political thought going back to the Founding Fathers and the original debates that shaped the Declaration of Independence and, ultimately, the U.S. Constitution. The author traces the evolution of conservative ideology, from James Madison up through the modern Republican Party, arguing that conservatism is facing its greatest threat in contemporary times-from the progressive left as well as from divisions within the Republican base. Will's erudition is impressive, though his text can be rather dense at times. He helps readers understand the theoretical basis for the current conservative outlook and provides numerous examples from our nation's history on how conservative political philosophy has shaped American history. VERDICT This is a timely and important book by one of the foremost contemporary conservative thinkers and writers. Recommended for most collections.- Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The veteran Washington Post columnist and TV commentator offers a richly documented history of and argument for a wider embrace of conservative political values."Richly documented" is an understatement. Will (A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred, 2014, etc.) is nothing if not a thorough, dedicated researcher and thinker, but he's often prolix. Many of the historical figures the author references will come as no surprisee.g., Burke, Moynihan, Madison, Lockeand there are also plenty from the literary world; these include allusions to Twain and Fitzgerald, whose closing sentences from The Great Gatsby provide Will with a metaphor for his principal points. Not much the Pulitzer winner offers here will surprise those who have paid attention to his rhetoric over the decades. His three American heroes remain: Washington, Lincoln, John Marshall. He thinks the U.S. government has grown too big, that it is too interested in providing entitlements (Will is a believer in much more self-reliance than he sees evident today), that schools and universities should do a much more rigorous job of transmitting the Western historical heritage, and that progressives just don't understand how America is supposed to work. However, in one chapter, he may surprise some readers: He declares he is an atheist (though "amiable, low-voltage"), and he spends a few pages reminding us that the founders were not particularly religious and that we must observe the separation of church and state. He praises the civil rights movement but asserts that much of it has gone wrong. Oddly missing are direct references to the current occupant of the White House, though Will does zing many of his predecessors (from both parties but principally Democrats), mostly for their failure to comprehend fully the concept of liberty that fueled the founders.The author's literate, committed voice sometimes disappears in his tangled wood of allusion and quotation. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
