Publications — Paul W. Gleason

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2021:

You can find my most recent writing on my substack, Unfamiliar Letters.

For the Los Angeles Review of Books:

“How to Be a Poverty Abolitionist”: A review of Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America

“The Lesson of a Long Illness”: A review of Ross Douthat’s The Deep Places.

“Imagining a Different Economy”: A review of Charles Camic’s Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics

2020:

For Washington Monthly:

“Monopolies Threaten Not Just Our Economy, But Our Liberty, too”: a review of Barry Lynn’s Liberty From All Masters

For The National Book Review

“Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Jack’ Wrestles with Two Great Themes: Race and Sin”: a review of Jack

“Elena Ferrante’s Brilliant Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman”: a review of The Lying Life of Adults

For the Los Angeles Review of Books

“Who Sabotaged the American Economy? Thorstein Veblen knows”: an essay on Veblen’s The Engineers and the Price System.

“Who’s There?” An essay on Covid-19

2019:

For The National Book Review:

“Why is the World So Weary and Cynical Today? A Major French Novelist Ponders”: Review of Michel Houellebecq’s Serotonin.

“Hemingway’s Days of Run, Women and Radicalism”: Review of Andrew Feldman’s Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba

For the LA Times:

“Meet the Insufferable Parents Who Will Do Anything to Get Their Kids Into the Gifted School”: review of Bruce Holsinger’s The Gifted School

“Aristotle’s Way” and “I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck”: review essay on Edith Hall and John Kim, therapies ancient and modern.

“Sam Peckinpah’s ‘The Wild Bunch’ killed the western dream, echoing the violence of 1969”: review of W.K. Stratton’s The Wild Bunch

For Pacific Standard:

“Should Millennials Blame Boomers for Economic Woes? A New Book Says Yes”: Review of Joseph Sternberg’s The Theft of a Decade

“Why is the Myers-Briggs Test Still So Popular?”: Review of Merve Emre’s The Personality Brokers

For Newsday:

“A History of the Bible”: review of John Barton’s history of the Bible and its interpreters

For the Los Angeles Review of Books

“Why Are Conservatives So Afraid of Higher Education?”: review of Heather Mac Donald’s The Diversity Delusion.

2018

For the Los Angeles Times:

"Shakespeare is at the center of Julie Schumacher's witty new campus satire": review of The Shakespeare Requirement

For Pacific Standard

"Martha Nussbaum Wants Americans to Calm Down": Review of Nussbaum's The Monarchy of Fear

"How to Fight Inequality, According to Thomas Piketty": review of Piketty's Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century and Naomi Beck's Hayek and the Evolution of Capitalism

For Newsday

“Hiking with Nietzsche”: review of John Kaag’s new memoir

"Bart D. Ehrman's book charts the rise of a world religion": review of Ehrman's The Triumph of Christianity

For The Washington Post:

"Are You Stuck in a Pointless Job? You Are Not Alone": review of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs and Sarah Kessler's Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work

For The Hedgehog Review:

"Shout at the Devil": review of Randall J. Stephens' The Devil's Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock 'n' Roll

"The Jack That Won't Stay in the Box": review of Sarah Ruth Hammond's God's Businessmen: Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War.

For Marginalia:

"The Once and Future Mainline College": review of Robert Benne's Keeping the Soul in Christian Higher Education

For the National Book Critics Circle blog:

"Much-esteemed colleagues!": review of Mikhail Zoshchenko's Sentimental Tales

2017

For The Point:

"The Picture in Her Mind": Joan Didion on political storytelling

"Articles of Faith": American civil religion and its critics

For The Guardian:
"The War with No End" Military shows on network TV