American Odyssey

To historian Craig Fehrman the 8,000-mile expedition (1804-06) indelibly associated with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark is nothing less than "our national Odyssey." To this TCM junkie their epic crossing of the continent suggests a road picture with more perils than Pauline and more plot twists than anything starring Hope and Crosby. Fehrman spent five years crafting this frontier Rashomon (my last movie analogy—promise) in which the journey unfolds through multiple viewpoints distilled from 30 archives and a hundred Native and other oral histories. What in less skillful hands might have been a mere travelogue becomes a cross-cultural, stunningly rendered rethink of Discoverers and Discovered.

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Less Choice, More Happiness

We live in a time and place where freedom can seem limitless and the endless options on offer are hurting our ability to lead happy, productive, and fulfilling lives. This idea, which until recently would have represented a conservative viewpoint—too much individual freedom and choice can undermine the goals we have for ourselves and our families—has become completely mainstream. The fact that it is now the theme of a popular business/self-help book (blurbed by the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and Angela Duckworth) is worth noting. David Epstein's Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better is, for all intents and purposes, a Burkean beach read.

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All Roads Lead to Rome

The Catholic Church saw incredible growth in the United States this past year, especially among young people (men, in particular). If you're tuned into the online discourse about this trend, you'll be familiar with the tradition-oriented, conservative kind of Catholic who might look down his nose at new, inexperienced converts or those who aren't as orthodox in their faith. There is nothing wrong with a preference for tradition and the piety that often goes with it. In fact, I would say Catholics the world over would do well to be more reverent. But, at the same time, the Church is and ought to be a home for all. It is, of course, a hospital for sinners. That's what makes Melanie McDonagh's new book, Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century, a worthwhile read.

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Leaving Stones Unturned

Bob Spitz has compiled a press-cuttings history of the Rolling Stones. Like much of their music, it is hacked together from other people's work, though Spitz at least gives attribution. The Rolling Stones is conventional rockographical stuff: a heroic legend, sensibly frontloaded. The first 350 of Spitz's 600 pages carry the band from postwar English childhoods to early success and the death by water of Brian Jones in July 1969. The next 200 pages describe the tax-dodging and depravity of their 1970s second act. The 44 years from 1982 to now get just over a page each, but even 50 pages are too much. The only interesting things the Stones have done since 1981's Tattoo You album are Keith Richards falling out of a coconut tree (2006) and Mick Jagger's solo recording of the Slow Horses theme tune "Strange Game" (2022).

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Left to Their Own Devices

Perhaps the greatest challenge every current affairs author faces is the inevitable decision of where to draw the line. As events continue to remain all-too-current, they must decide where to finally freeze time in place, put down the pen, and decide that no future "current" events will be included. Then, they must embrace the inescapable sense of anxiety over the universe of future events that, as a result, won't make the cut.

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Busting up the Boom-Bust Cycle

Throughout the 1920s and '30s, many economists were preoccupied by a topic given poignancy by the dramatic economic ups-and-downs experienced by most Western countries following the carnage of the First World War.

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All the Rory Details

Alan Shipnuck has very good timing. His new book is a biography of Rory McIlroy, the golf champion. It was published last month, two days before the Masters tournament. McIlroy won the Masters last year. That was surely the "hook" of the book, its impetus.

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Europe's Painful Quest for Unity

All roads lead to the European Union. This, in a nutshell, is the argument of Roderick Beaton's book covering the history of the continent from ancient Greece to today's war in Ukraine. A professor emeritus of history at King's College London, Beaton wants his readers to consider the idea of Europe as it developed from around the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) to the siege of Mariupol (2022 A.D.). And in a swift narrative he recounts this history, moving seamlessly from wars to peace treaties, from Polybius and Dante to Francis Fukuyama, from Jesus to Jacques Delors.

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Guilty Reading Pleasure

If you are a bookish person, odds are that your running gift-list for family members, friends, colleagues, and so on includes other heavy readers. Among them may well be some who enjoy mysteries, "crime fiction," and the like. If that is indeed the case, I have a suggestion for you: Keigo Higashino’s novel Guilt, just published by Minotaur Press. You might want to get a copy for yourself as well.

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All Steak, No Sizzle: Samuel Alito Gets Down to Business

Mollie Hemingway has written the rare Supreme Court book that's both useful and enjoyable. Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution works at once as biography, institutional history, and a kind of play-by-play of the Roberts Court in its most consequential years. It is, above all, a book about Samuel […]

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