The Bookmonger

The Pilgrims didn't wear buckles on their hats, but they did give us one of our best holidays, says Melanie Kirkpatrick in her new book, Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Kirkpatrick explains why this celebration caught on in American culture, what the Pilgrims would think of our modern festivities, and how the terrorist attacks of 9/11 compelled her to write about Thanksgiving.

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What explains the enduring appeal of vampires? British writer Christopher Frayling explains the attraction in Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection from Count Dracula to Vampirella.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Frayling describes his own fascination with these neck biters as well as how some have evolved in recent years away from their villainous heritage. Finally, he picks his favorite vampire movie, offering his suggestion for the best vampire flick to watch for Halloween.

Why would a series of religious biographies issue a title on the famous iconoclast H.L Mencken? That's the challenge D.H. Hart had to answer in his new book, Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H.L. Mencken.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Hart describes his subject's massive influence nearly a century ago as well as what Mencken really thought about God, the universe, and everything. He also tries to explain why Mencken, despite his apostasies, appeals more to conservatives than liberals today.

Between 2011 and 2015, the opinion section of the New York Times marked the sesquicentennial of the Civil War by tracking events on their anniversaries via a blog with original content--and now its editors have issued a collection, Disunion: A History of the Civil War.

In a 15-minute conversation with The Bookmonger (we had so much fun, we went long!), co-editor Clay Risen describes how the project came together and why it relied so much on amateur experts, plus he describes the most surprising thing he learned about the conflict (it involves coffee). He also makes a case for why conservatives should read the op-ed page of the New York Times.

"I do not exaggerate to propose that this may prove to be William F. Buckley's finest book ever," says Christopher Buckley, about a brand-new volume of his late father's work: A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century, a collection of eulogies edited by James Rosen of Fox News.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Rosen explains how he came up with the idea for this book, what made WFB such an excellent stylist, and how WFB managed to range in these brief compositions from the likes of Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan to John Lennon and Jerry Garcia.

Conservatives always complain about the liberal media. But when did they start to fight it? Right from the start, says Nicole Hemmer in Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Hemmer explains how conservatives in the 1940s and 1950s made liberal media bias an political issue, telling the stories of radio showman Clarence Manion and National Review publisher Bill Rusher. She also describes what today's conservatives can learn from these figures of yesteryear.

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This is Sparta? Who cares? Why should we pay any attention to an ancient Greek city not called Athens? Paul A. Rahe explains in his new book, The Spartan Regime: Its Character, Origins, and Grand Strategy.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Rahe describes what makes the Spartans distinctive, why he studies them as a scholar, and what their story can teach us about statesmanship in the 21st century.

How does a secular Jew become a faithful Christian? Andrew Klavan tells his conversion story in The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Klavan explains his choice, describes how his family responded, and confronts the problem of anti-Semitism in the history of the West and Christianity.

Did Ronald Reagan get one of his best ideas from John F. Kennedy? That's what Lawrence Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic claim in JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Kudlow and Domitrovic discuss why we haven't heard this story before, why Democrats have abandoned their hero's supply-side legacy, and whether Donald Trump's tax plan is in the Kennedy and Reagan tradition of believing tax cuts are better than tax hikes at generating revenue.

The biggest challenge the next president faces almost certainly will be an unexpected disaster, says Tevi Troy, author of Shall We Wake the President? Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Troy talks about disasters in all their forms, from terrorist attacks to the Zika virus, and describes the role of presidents, the federal government, and ordinary citizens in prevention and response. He points to the worst disaster-manager in U.S. history (we're looking at you, Woodrow Wilson) and predicts the event that will come to be seen as the great disaster of the next four to eight years.