Rare is the gift that leaves a lasting impression. A compelling book that changes our perspective, inspires us to take a new path or provides solutions to today’s issues can be a lifelong treasure to give someone. With that in mind, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is offering its 2023 Holiday Book List, designed to satisfy the intellectually curious.
All book suggestions are affiliated with a Bradley Prize winner or grantee organization and are contributing to the world of ideas in a meaningful way. We hope you find one for that special friend, family member or colleague – or even yourself.
Holiday Book Buying Guide 2022
by Amity Shlaes
If the New Deal failed in its primary task to put people to work, then so did its critics. Voters elected the New Deal president four times. Bestselling author Amity Shlaes gives voice to the sidelined New Deal critics. In their own words, but with contextualization from Shlaes, the critics lay out their arguments against the numerous New Deal programs. This book supplies the public with what has been sorely lacking for so long: the story of American opposition to the New Deal.
Edmund Burke and the Perennial Battle, 1789 - 1797tium
by Daniel B. Klein and Dominic Pino
The Battle of Actium had great consequences for the Roman Empire. Had Antony and Cleopatra won, the empire’s capital might have moved from Rome to Alexandria, shifting power to the east with profound consequences in the ancient world and ultimately the West. This book is essential history that features three of the greatest figures of their time.
Social Justice Fallacies
by Thomas Sowell
The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an appeal to many different people, for many different reasons. But those who use the same words do not always present the same meanings. Clarifying those meanings is the first step toward finding out what we agree on and disagree on. From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are. Social Justice Fallacies reveals how many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.
The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
by John Cochrane
The philosopher Roger Scruton was among the leading conservative thinkers of the post-World War II generation. This book assembles the very best of his essays and commentaries, arranged thematically. Throughout the collection, Scruton proves himself to be at his most scintillating, controversial, and brilliant.
Getting About: Travel Writings of William F. Buckley Jr.
by William F. Buckley Jr. and Bill Meehan
Well known as a political commentator and the author of sixteen novels, William F. Buckley Jr. was also a superb chronicler of travel. Getting About gathers more than one hundred of his articles about journeys by boat, train, or plane, representing a lifetime of adventure around the world—from Annapolis to Zurich, from the Azores to the Virgin Islands. An elegant jet-setter with a flair for literary journalism, Buckley had few rivals in the art of travel writing.
Getting About is pure enjoyment, but it also broadens the significance of Buckley’s œuvre. Along with Bill Meehan’s illuminating introduction, this delightful collection helps preserve Buckley’s legacy as his centenary, in 2025, approaches.
The Noise of Typewriters: Remembering Journalism
by Lance Morrow
W.H. Auden wrote, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Journalism is a different matter. In a brilliant study that is, in part, a memoir of his forty years as an essayist and critic at Time magazine, Lance Morrow returns to the age of typewriters and to the twentieth century’s extraordinary cast of characters—statesmen and dictators, saints and heroes, liars and monsters, and the reporters, editors, and publishers who interpreted their deeds. He shows how journalism has touched the history of the last one hundred years, has shaped it, distorted it, and sometimes proved decisive in its outcomes.
How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises
by Spencer Klavan
The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All – but There is a Solution
by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
The Canceling of the American Mind will change how you view cancel culture. Rather than a moral panic, we should consider it a dysfunctional part of how Americans battle for power, status, and dominance. Cancel culture is just one symptom of a much larger problem: the use of cheap rhetorical tactics to “win” arguments without actually winning arguments.
The good news is that we can beat back this threat to democracy through better citizenship. The Canceling of the American Mind offers concrete steps toward reclaiming a free speech culture, with materials specifically tailored for parents, teachers, business leaders, and everyone who uses social media.