Arts & Letters

gary yim / Shutterstock.com

What Keeps the States United?

America is too large for self-government, a new book argues—but there’s a remedy.

Rasmus Holmboe Dahl / Shutterstock.com

Two Intifadas and a Flawed Theory

What one of the Marine Corps’ leading minds reveals about war, terror, and insurgency.

Viscount Castlereagh

The Man Who Put Europe in Order

Reconsidering the foreign-policy leadership of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

Gage Skidmore CC

Whole Foods’ Better Business

John Mackey’s humane vision for capitalism

Zimand / Shutterstock.com

In the Army Now: Gangs, Nazis & the Mentally Ill

A new book chronicles how the War on Terror opened the ranks to risky recruits.

Illustration by Michael Hogue

Greatness Visible

William Styron’s letters are masterpieces of the genre.

illustration by Michael Hogue

Austrians Don’t Blow Bubbles

Booms and busts are brought about by government intervention, not market failure.

MORE IN Arts & Letters

Never Mind Humanity

Ray Kurzweil’s theory of consciousness betrays a simplistic understanding of human nature.

Chilean Chekhov

Czeslaw Milosz, the brilliant Polish-Lithuanian dissident essayist, once gently criticized Pablo Neruda, …

Two Blind Sociologists and an Elephant

A new study on conservative activism at universities is confused but not a hack job.

Social Change Didn’t Kill the Romantic Comedy

Yes, most aren’t very good, but it wasn’t the sexual revolution that made it so.

The Spy Who Bored Me

Ian McEwan’s disappointing Cold War tale

Oakeshott vs. America

Why politics needs practical reason, not written constitutions

What Same-Sex Marriage Means

Maggie Gallagher and John Corvino debate the case for and against

Dwelling In Possibility

I enjoyed very much reading Alan Jacobs on “fanciful biographies” of fictional …

Conservatism’s Mozart

Joe Sobran was the literary heir of H.L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce.

The Well-Tempered Anarchist

Why decentralized problem-solving beats technocracy