The Orange Blossom Special was a passenger train that ran from Penn Station in New York City to Miami, Florida between 1925 and 1953. Here’s Johnny Cash: Palm Beach Atlantic University historian and Current contributing editor Elizabeth Stice evokes the […]
book reviews
2024 in 25 Current book reviews
What’s the measure of this year? A story in Current book reviews.
The hospitality of great books and why we need Fall Books Week
There is something wondrous about books that people have known since the earliest days of writing. Books can heal weary souls.
Interview with Elizabeth Stice: announcing Orange Blossom Ordinary
Introducing Orange Blossom Ordinary, a new review of books, edited by Elizabeth Stice
An alternative source for book reviews
Additional book review resources to help you find the next good read.
Current’s first ever Spring Books Week
It is no secret that we all at Current love books. It’s a rather extreme sort of love, which leads grown men and women to reflect on a regular basis just where else in this house, overflowing as it is […]
Current book reviews: a (somewhat unruly) guide
A good review, like a good essay of any sort, will stay with the reader for a while. The conversation that started with the review will continue…
A library for joy, sorrow, and reflection: 2023 with Current book reviews
A summary of the year with Current book reviews. Find our top 23 reviews for ’23, and more.
In defense of academic book reviews
Here is historian Carolyn Eastman, the book review editor at the William and Mary Quarterly, at The Chronicle of Higher Education: Reviews can contain perfunctory writing, boring chapter-by-chapter summaries, and criticism so mild it’s almost imperceptible. But having just stepped […]
Chris Rufo: “Intellectual historian” or “intellectual bully”?
Chris Rufo is a conservative activist whose claim to fame is an appearance on the old Tucker Carlson show on Fox News. That appearance caught the attention of then president Donald Trump. Since then, Rufo has become Ron DeSantis’s point […]
Cormac McCarthy inspires a consequential question: What is the worth of holy awe?
One of America’s great novelists passed away this week. Here is National Public Radio: Cormac McCarthy, one of the great novelists of American literature, died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 89. His […]
Paul Matzko completes his critical review of Stephen Wolfe’s book on Christian nationalism
We wrote about Matzko’s review of Wolfe yesterday. Get up to speed here. But there’s more! Matzko turned to Twitter to finish the review: Nice work, Paul!
Check out Current‘s new “Reviews” section
We publish a lot of book reviews in Current features section. For those of you who love books and ideas that come from books, we have gathered all of our reviews and placed them under the “Reviews” tag above. Enjoy! […]
Two divergent explanations of Southern inequality
Over at Dissent, political scientist Jared Loggins reviews Adolph Reed’s The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives and Imani Perry’s South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation. (See my review of […]
Historian Michael Kazin reviews conservative pundit Mark Levin’s book on Marxism
Michael Kazin is a history professor at Georgetown and former editor of Dissent. Some of you may recall his Current review of Anthea Butler’s White Evangelical Racism. Over at The Nation, Kazin reviews radio and Fox News personality Mark Levin’s […]
On book reviewing
I’ve had a lot of great reviews of my books. (My favorite remains Lauren Winner’s review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home in Books & Culture). I’ve also had some bad reviews written by people who wished I had […]
Eric Miller reviews Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn’s Ars Vitae
Eric Miller is editor of Current. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn is a Current contributor. And some of you recall my podcast conversation with Lasch-Quinn in Episode 77 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. Here is a taste of Miller’s review […]