John W. Nevin: Reformed Critique of the Altar Call
John Williamson Nevin, Mercersburg Theology, and Hart's biography: a high-church Calvinist take on the anxious bench, revivalism, and the altar call.
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Book reviews and critical responses that summarize key arguments, assess strengths and weaknesses, and situate works in context.
English Common Law and a Birth of Bureaucracy
John Hudson’s Formation of the English Common Law: Anglo-Saxon shire and hundred courts, royal justice before Henry II, and the slow birth of...
Is Cryptonomicon's Pontifex algorithm any good?
Pontifex, the playing-card cipher from Cryptonomicon: how Bruce Schneier’s Solitaire algorithm works, its keystream biases, and real security...
Philip the Bold: Kleptocracy as an Art
Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy from 1363: a French royal captive at Poitiers who built a principality through diplomacy, patronage, and...
The Plantagenet Triptych: Dan Jones' Saga of English History
Dan Jones' Plantagenet triptych — The Plantagenets, Henry V, and The Wars of the Roses — as popular history for reading and listening.
Alinksy's Rules for Radicals
Summary and commentary on Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: community organizing, tactics, conflict strategy, and the legacy of Chicago-style...
Jackson: The Determination of Union
H. W. Brands’ Andrew Jackson biography: Scots-Irish frontier ethos, New Orleans, the presidency, Indian removal, and Jackson as blunt democratic...
The Lead Age: Climate Studies of Late Antiquity
From Paul Stephenson’s New Rome: Roman Climate Optimum, Greenland ice-core lead, metallurgy, diet, and how lead pollution and climate shift...
Weber: Science and Politics as Vocation
Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation” and “Politics as a Vocation” in the NYRB edition: Beruf, disenchantment, charisma, academic careerism, and the...
The Origins of Western Law: Early Greek Jurisprudence
Michael Gagarin’s Early Greek Law: how classical Greek legal procedure grew with literacy, oral vs written norms, and what “law” meant before and...
Omegarus: Grainville's Last Man and Dying Earth
Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville’s Le dernier homme (1805): genealogy of dying-Earth SF from Omegarus through Hodgson, Wells, and Jack Vance’s...
Walter Ong: Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue
Walter Ong on Petrus Ramus (1515–1572): anti-Aristotelian pedagogy, printed diagrams, the birth of “method,” and how print reshaped rhetoric,...