American happiness and discontents The unruly torrent, 2008-2020

Washington Post columnist Will (The Conservative Sensibility) discourses on politics, history, fashion, and science in this erudite and eclectic collection of his published columns. Will's eulogies of conservative leaders, including presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, National Review editor William F. Buckley, and political commentator Charles Krauthammer, are particularly rich and insightful. Noting that Krauthammer was in medical school when a diving accident paralyzed him from the neck down, Will writes that "medicine made Charles intimate with finitude... the fact that expiration is written into the lease we have on our bodies." Will also skewers President Trump ("Cry-Baby-in-Chief") and Republican lawmakers who "gambol around ankles with a canine hunger for petting," and dismisses calls by progressives and right-wing populists (the "Cassandra caucus") for economic reforms to better protect American workers as a desire to "liv free from the friction of circumstances." Elsewhere, Will dives into the debate over the authenticity of a photo from the Spanish Civil War and laments the popularity of jeans among American adults. Though his dismissals of climate change and economic inequality feel out of touch, Will is a consistently provocative and articulate opinion-maker. Fans will delight in this expansive survey of his recent judgments. (Sept.)

An overstuffed collection of the conservative columnist's reviews and rarefied reflections from the Washington Post, geared toward his enduring "intellectually upscale" readers. Organized by themes--American history, politics, baseball, obituaries, and books by favorite authors such as Max Hastings, Ron Chernow, and Rick Atkinson--this latest gathering of Will's writing aspires to what he calls "trenchant elegance." More often than not, he attains it. Railing against big government and the overreach of the executive branch, the author, well known for his old-school, small-L libertarianism and arch mannerisms, often returns to definitive moments in the ongoing story of America, such as the Cold War, the moon landing, and the JFK assassination. Regarding Hastings' excellent recent book, Vietnam, Will writes, "Vietnam remains an American sorrow of squandered valor….U.S. statesmen and commanders, Hastings writes, lied too much to the nation and the world but most calamitously to themselves." Some of Will's irritations include the modern lack of civil discourse; presidential "prolixity" (the former president appears by name sparingly: "this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron"), the "scandal" of mass incarceration and the overcriminalization of American life; and emotional support animals in airplanes. A deeply erudite, always opinionated commentator, Will laments the erosion of literacy and advocates for binge-reading rather than binge-watching, and he parses the intricacies of recent Supreme Court cases with authority. The author concludes this volume with tributes to some of his fallen heroes, such as Margaret Thatcher ("She had the smooth, cold surface of a porcelain figurine, but her decisiveness made her the most formidable woman in twentieth-century politics, and England's most formidable woman since its greatest sover-eign, Elizabeth I"), Ronald Reagan, and, of course, National Review founder William F. Buckley, "the 20th century's most consequential journalist." A gentleman scholar and scold, Will continues to wield his sharp, discerning prose. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.