Tag: book reviews

1,603 words

Lauren Oyler
Fake Accounts: A Novel
New York: Catapult, 2021

Fake Accounts is a story about a standard neoliberal girl who discovers that her boyfriend secretly runs a conspiracy theory page on Instagram shortly before his death in a bicycle accident. The primary reason I decided to review this novel was the assumption that many writers and thinkers on the Dissident Right publish their thoughts under a nom de guerre or, at a minimum, keep the full breadth of their views from friends and family; obviously out of necessity. (more…)

Jonathan Haidt

4,274 slov

Část první

English original here

V první části své eseje jsem se věnoval Haidtovu argumentu, že morálka se vyvinula jako reakce na různé „adaptivní výzvy“. Z těch se etablovalo několik „morálních základů“ spojených s péčí, férovostí, loajalitou, autoritou, posvátností a svobodou. (more…)

2,007 words

Male Supremacism in the United States:
From Patriarchal Traditionalism to Misogynist Incels and the Alt-Right
Series: Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right
Emily K. Carian, Alex DiBranco, Chelsea Ebin (Editors)
Abingdon (Oxon) & New York: Routledge, 2022

Despite its beguiling title and subtitle, I am sorry to report that this new book from Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right is a very sloppy doggy’s dinner. (more…)

1,947 words

Dr. William Cooke with Laura Ungar
Canary in the Coal Mine: A Forgotten Rural Community, a Hidden Epidemic, and a Lone Doctor Battling for the Life, Health, and Soul of the People 
Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 2021

Along America’s two seaboards, provided law and order remains intact, the cities are glittering economically. But as one moves inland, the economic desperation caused by the American elite’s policy[1] of deindustrialization increases. (more…)

1,303 words

David Epstein
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
New York: Riverhead Books, 2019

No Tool is omnicompetent. — Arnold Toynbee

[W]ork that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge is less likely to be funded, less likely to appear in famous journals, more likely to be ignored upon publication, and then more likely in the long run to be a smash hit in the library of human knowledge. — David Epstein (more…)

2,653 words

Paul Fussell
Class: A Guide Through the American Class System
New York: Summit Books, 1983 (first edition; many since)

Written in 1980-82 and published in 1983, Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System is one of those rare books that most literate people seem to have heard of, say they want to read if they haven’t, and have fierce opinions about whether they’ve read it or not. I see this last aspect frequently on social media. (more…)

2,101 words

Mildred Walker (1905-1998) wrote a series of books considered Western regional, and was compared to Willa Cather. Walker, however, has a sensibility all her own, and Winter Wheat (1944) was a book that impressed me from the first page. In it, people are tied to the land and the wheat it produces.

It begins in an office by the storage silo in Gotham, a village of 75 that hardly lives up to its pretentious name. (more…)

Léon Bloy

2,551 words

I have spent a fair amount of time reading Léon Bloyʼs literary œuvre or output (articles, novels, monographs, pamphlets, etc.) over the last few years, a French writer who passed away in his home country in 1917, near the end of the First World War. He produced an inverted but cerulean abyss of works — resplendent works, works of great thought and shining intention; so great in fact and so powerful in expression were they, are they, that it is surprising how little of his work had been translated into English until recently. (more…)

1,365 words

Colleen Doody
Detroit’s Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism
Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2013

In 1945, with the exception of the United States, Canada, and a few other places, the civilized world was in ruins. While the industrial centers of the United States were not burned-out husks pocked with bomb craters, the economy was not well-functioning. There was inflation and a shortage of consumer goods. (more…)

1,411 words

Shawn Bell
Post—: Short Stories by Shawn Bell
Quakertown, Pa.: Antelope Hill, 2022

Other than calling his work “dissident fiction,” it’s hard to categorize Shawn Bell’s short stories. In his recent Antelope Hill collection, entitled Post—, it’s mostly their cutting insights into the insidious façade of globalism — and their tremendously high quality — which link these stories together. Within Post— we have elements of dystopia, coming-of-age, romance, alternate history, family drama, tragedy, and the slice of life found in the faded Houckian suburbs of the American Midwest. (more…)

2,813 words

50 Classic Tales: The Western Folk and Fairy Tale Tradition is a collection of classic European folk stories published by The White People’s Press which offers not only the stories themselves, but the vital ethno-cultural context from which they sprang.

In this volume’s invaluable Introduction, translator Paul Marlais outlines a brief history of the folk tale within the proto-European and Indo-European traditions, which stretch back into the misty remembrances of pre-history. He underscores the value of these stories as entertainment, morality fables, and cultural artifacts. (more…)

You can pre-order Jonathan Bowden’s Reactionary Modernism here.

1,049 words

In my writing for Counter-Currents, I’ve called for the formation of a dissident high culture. At the time of writing, there is only a smattering of cultural institutions which are explicitly Dissident Right, which means that the future of dissident high culture is whatever we make it. The future is a vast empty space which we have been tasked with filling.

But the past of dissident high culture is not so empty. No, it is rather crowded over at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel. Indeed, you could say that the avant-garde of the past was decisively reactionary. (more…)