Mark Dunbar

Joe Biden: The Weathervane and the Storm

19 January 2021

If margins make a mandate, President Joe Biden has the largest mandate of any elected president in US history. He won the largest vote... Read More

Richard Hofstadter: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Uncollected Essays 1956–1965

23 June 2020

EDITED BY SEAN WILENTZ LIBRARY OF AMERICA, 2020 Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the status quo—its last line of ideological defense. “It’s... Read More

Why Read?

28 April 2020

BOOK READERS must seem all the same to non-book readers. Just another hobby group, like soccer fans or bridge players. I experienced this prejudice... Read More

Book Review: The Broken Road: George Wallace and a Daughter’s Journey to Reconciliation

30 March 2020

BY PEGGY WALLACE KENNEDY BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING, DECEMBER 2019 304PP., $28.00 George Wallace, four-term governor of Alabama and three-time presidential candidate, relished hypocrisy. He relished... Read More

Kobe Bryant: A Tragedy

29 January 2020

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of hating Kobe Bryant. I was a Sacramento Kings fan, and Sacramento was always losing to... Read More

Populists and Progressives

27 December 2019

“Do you believe in a citizen’s right to gun ownership?” “I do.” “Do you believe that the life of an unborn child should be... Read More

The History of Philosophy

27 December 2019

BY A.C. GRAYLING PENGUIN PRESS, 2019 704PP.; $35.00 If A.C. Grayling’s The History of Philo­sophy were a river, it would be shallow with a... Read More