Shelf Life - books on conservatism issues - Brief Article - Bibliography

NB: With this issue we revive a feature familiar to longtime readers of NR, a feature formerly known as "Random Notes" and "The Right Books." In it we will periodically call attention to books both new and old, according to their merits-or sometimes lack thereof-as well as to noteworthy trends in the publishing business.

THE Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a little press that publishes an amazing number of high-quality conservative titles. ISI's hallmark is to approach intellectually challenging sub jects in a style that is accessible to the average intelligent reader, avoiding both dumbing-down and unnecessary jargon. Here are three notable recent titles.

Common Truths: New Perspectives on Natural Law (345 pp., $24.95), edited by Edward B. McLean, assembles 13 essays asking whether law ever has a deeper basis than the mere consent of the governed. The essayists agree that it does: that-in a tradition dating back to ancient Greece-there is a natural law "written on our hearts." A number of contributors discuss the problem in a religious context, but John Jenkins, in his essay on Aquinas, makes the important point that in natural law "the goodness and value of things human ...are not explicitly dependent" on a particular faith.

In the Clinton era, it is not surprising that a collection of essays on George Washington would focus on issues of character. The essayists of Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition (355 pp., $29.95) return repeatedly to Washington's in carnation of republican virtues. In his afte rword, NR's Richard Brookhiser summarizes: "George Washington, my psychoanalyst wife observes shrewdly, appeals to small children and to mature adults, but not to adolescents." In an age in which we are all encouraged to act like adolescents, it's understandable that Washington's popularity has waned. But in offering a corrective, this work, edited by Gary L. Gregg II and Matthew Spalding, is much more than a dose of moral castor oil. Mackubin Owens, for example, in one of the volume's best essays, does a wonderful job of rescuing Washington's reputation as a general.

In Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (279 pp., $24.95), classicist Bruce S. Thornton tackles the self-congratulatory notion among moderns that our era, unlike every other, is immune to self- delusive superstitions. Thornton outlines in vigorous, highly entertaining detail how a number of pseudoscientific hoaxes-including the supposed prevalence of goddess-worship in prehistoric Europe -have become important factors in intellectual life, despite having their origins more in wish-fulfillment than in genuine scholarship.

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