Jordan Michael Smith is a journalist and book critic whose writing has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Slate. He contributed essays and reviews to The Weekly Standard between 2010 and 2012, covering topics in history, politics, and intellectual thought, including pieces on Reinhold Niebuhr and Leo Strauss.
When Reinhold Niebuhr died in June 1971, the New York Times obituary described him as “a theologian who preached in the marketplace, a philosopher of ethics who applied his belief to everyday moral predicaments, and a political liberal who subscribed to a hard-boiled pragmatism.” That apt summary…
History’s greatest novelist has not received the definitive scholarly biography he deserves. Why not? I put this question to Joseph Frank of Stanford, the author of a celebrated five-volume biography of Dostoyevsky, but even Frank admits he has “no simple answer” to the question. Perhaps, he…
Citizens of London