Ian Johnson’s The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao provides a picture of the vibrant and varied religious faith in China, demonstrating that even after Mao Zedong’s campaign against religion and the devastation of the Cultural Revolution, religion has not only reemerged in some parts of China but is thriving.

Largely absent from the mainstream media’s barrage against Sebastian Gorka is genuine scholarly discussion of his high-grossing Defeating Jihad.

Mark Lilla’s new book, The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, examines the power of nostalgia in its political manifestation.

Religious communities are rediscovering their voice, and Miroslav Volf argues the interconnected world is the perfect platform for the world religions to reclaim their original messages of universality and human flourishing.

With his novel concept of sovereign obligation in A World in Disarray, Richard Haass makes an important advance in the search for peace in a disoriented world. But its advances fall short, unable to grasp the essential moral quality of world order.

James Kirchick’s The End of Europe provides an informative tour through contemporary political developments, but its lack of analytical rigor is remarkable.

Nigel Hamilton’s Commander in Chief reveals Franklin Roosevelt formulated at a very early phase a clear vision for how a liberal international order should look post-World War II.

Drawdown: The American Way of Postwar is a fascinating analysis not of how the U.S. fights wars, but what it does in their aftermath.

As public attention shifts to the anniversaries of the two World Wars, the War of 1812 is becoming forgotten again, and now seems an ideal time to survey the landscape of new books written in the (roughly) decade surrounding its sesquicentennial.