The Insularity of Contemporary Feminism

Toward a Humanist Justice: The Political Philosophy of Susan Moller Okin Edited by Deborah Satz and Rob Reich Oxford University Press, 2009; 260 pages, $85.00 In that attractive but rather closed community known as American higher education, feminists own a lot of real estate. The small number of courses in “women’s studies” in the 1960s […]

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How the West’s Fertility War Has Left Women at Risk

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men Mara Hvistendahl Public Affairs, 2011; 314 pages, $26.99 This brave and timely book has many strengths and one glaring, but understandable, weakness. The strength of this book is the reporting. Mara Hvistendahl, a liberal, pro-choice feminist, painstakingly documents the catastrophic […]

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What Economic Conservatives Don’t Get

America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb: How the Looming Debt Crisis Threatens the American Dream— and How We Can Turn the Tide Before It’s Too Late Peter Ferrara Broadside Books/Harper Collins, 2011; $25.99, 432 pages When he wrote The Foes of Our Household in 1917, Theodore Roosevelt noted that “reforms are excellent, but if there is nobody […]

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The Bitter Fruit of the Sexual Revolution

Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker Oxford University Press, 2010; 312 pages, $24.95 Although written two centuries ago, the novels of Jane Austen remain a fascination with many young adults living on this side of the Atlantic. It is hard to imagine a […]

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Adam Sandler, Male Drifters, and the New-Girl Economy

Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys Kay S. Hymowitz Basic Books, 2011; 284 pages, $25.99 A couple of months ago, the Yale chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon was suspended for its members’ behavior during pledge week. Pledges, many of them blindfolded, shouted out chants to their female classmates such […]

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The Welfare State Dilemma, Left and Right

Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State William Voegeli with a foreword by Steven F. Hayward Encounter Books, 2010; 327 pages, $30.50 Government Is the Problem: Memoirs of Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Reformer Robert B. Carleson, Edited by Susan A. Carleson and Hans A. Zeiger American Civil Rights Union, 2009; 160 pages, $25.00 If the American Conservative, National Review, and […]

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Creating a Family-Centered Economy

Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Healthcare, Deficits, and More John C. Médaille ISI Books, 2010; 282 pages, $26.95 God’s Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State Lew Daly The University of Chicago Press, 2009; 318 pages, $37.50 Recessionary times mean job losses, belt tightening, bailouts, and greater […]

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Demographic Predictions

Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young against Old, Child against Parent, Worker against Boss, Company against Rival, and Nation against Nation Ted C. Fishman Scribner, 2010; 416 pages, $27.50 Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century Eric Kaufmann Profile Books (U.S. […]

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Misreading the Lost Moment of 1965

Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle Over Black Family Life from LBJ to Obama James T. Patterson Basic Books, 2010; 264 pages, $33.95 Among the characteristics of what Angelo M. Codevilla calls America’s Ruling Class is widespread skepticism, expressed by Republicans as well as Democrats, of the ability of public policy […]

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The Ironies of Blue-Family Values

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart Bill Bishop Houghton Mifflin, 2008; 384 pages, $25.00 Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture Naomi Cahn and June Carbone Oxford University Press, 2010; 288 pages, $29.95 When Mexican poet Octavio Paz went to Spain in 1937 […]

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