• About
  • Contact
  • Staff
  • Home
  • Essays
  • Forum
  • Podcasts
  • Book Reviews
  • Liberty Classics

Brian Murray Subscribe

Brian Murray teaches in the writing department at Loyola University Maryland.

August 8, 2019|Kill Bill, Margot Robbie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino, Sharon Tate

Tarantino Goes Mainstream (Almost)

by Brian Murray|

Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (Sony Pictures).
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” lapses into violence, but not until late in the game.

March 1, 2019|David Fincher, Fight Club, Iron John, masculinity, Robert Bly, Tyler Durden

Fight Club: A Cult Movie at 20

by Brian Murray|

Brad Pitt and Ed Norton in Fight Club, 1999 (alamy.com)
When it first appeared back in 1999, the reviewers wanted to punch it out.

July 16, 2018|Benedetto Croce, Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Postmodernism, semiotics, Umberto Eco

The Engaging Mind of Umberto Eco

by Brian Murray|

A final essay collection from the author of The Name of the Rose.

April 13, 2018|Bosley Crowther, Bruce Willis, Charles Bronson, Death Wish, Eli Roth, Hostel, Michael Winner, Motion Picture Production Code

“Revenge in Modern Times Shall Not Be Justified”

by Brian Murray|

Charles Bronson in Death Wish, 1974.
The thought that Bruce Willis will replicate Charles Bronson’s many trips to this well is dispiriting but unavoidable.

December 1, 2017|Bob Woodward, Liam Neeson, Mark Felt, Peter Landesman, Watergate

A Pretty Shallow Deep Throat

by Brian Murray|

A scene from 'Mark Felt'

From the cover of Vanity Fair’s July 2005 issue blared this headline: “I’m the Guy They Called Deep Throat.”

Read More

November 20, 2017|Alain de Botton, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lionel Trilling, Past and Present, Victorians, William James

The Achievement of Gertrude Himmelfarb

by Brian Murray|

Less than wealth, even less than ethnicity or race, what separates today’s Americans, Himmelfarb observes, are starkly differing assumptions about fundamental things.

September 12, 2016|David Maurer, Maria Konnikova, The Big Con, The Confidence Game

Homo Sapiens: An Easy Mark

by Brian Murray|

Maria Konnikova’s new book arrives just as the idea of “the confidence man” is back in the news. “Con man” and “con artist” are terms that have been bestowed by Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio on their party’s nominee for the presidency. But Konnikova, in The Confidence Game, is not interested in politics per se. Instead, in certain respects, she seeks to follow in the path of David Maurer, citing his research several times in her widely publicized work. Back in 1940, Maurer, a linguistics professor, published a close and candid study of a certain, and certainly fascinating, aspect of criminal…

Read More

September 9, 2016|Hands of Stone, Jonathan Jakubowicz, Raging Bull, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, WBC Welterwight Crown

The Nature of Machismo

by Brian Murray|

Styles make fights, boxing analysts say. So it’s not surprising that more than three decades later, Roberto Durán’s first two fights against Sugar Ray Leonard, in 1980, still make for such compelling viewing. These fighters were opposites in so many ways. Durán was known for a style that stressed skilled infighting and hard, relentless punching. He scored 69 victories, 55 by knockout, in his first 70 fights. He was famous as the fearsome man with las manos de piedra—“hands of stone.”

Read More

May 31, 2016|Damsels in Distress, Jane Austen, Love and Friendship, Metropolitan, Whit Stillman

Jane Austen’s Memorable Con Woman

by Brian Murray|

Whit Stillman made his name in 1990 with Metropolitan, an Oscar-nominated low-budget charmer that remains fresh and enjoyable today. Stillman wrote and directed the film, which focused on a group of mostly well-heeled college freshmen who spend Christmas break frequenting elegant parties and late night bull sessions in what one character calls the “urban haute bourgeoisie” haunts of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Read More

May 16, 2016|Fools Frauds and Firebrands, Jean Paul Sartre, Mario Vargas Llosa, Notes on the Death of Culture, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, Roger Scruton, Slavoj Zizek, T.S. Eliot

When Words Are Weapons

by Brian Murray|

Back in the 1950s, when Mario Vargas Llosa was a university student in Peru, the standards for great literature were clear. Cervantes, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and such key 20th century novelists as James Joyce and Thomas Mann, observes Vargas Llosa in Notes on the Death of Culture, “wrote books that looked to defeat death, outlive their authors and continue attracting and fascinating readers in the future.” Novels like Ulysses and The Magic Mountain, produced through “indefatigable efforts,” required of their readers “an intellectual concentration almost as great as that of their writers.” In fact culture itself, notes Vargas Llosa in this relatively…

Read More

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

Read More

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

Read More

Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

Read More

James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

Read More

Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

Read More

Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

Read More

Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

Read More

America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

Read More

Recent Posts

  • The Just Restraint of the Vicious

    For some contemporary criminal justice reformers, devotion to ideology leads to illogical conclusions about human nature and character change.
    by Gerard T. Mundy

  • Too Immature to be Punished?

    When I look back on my own life, I think I knew by the age of ten that one should not strangle old ladies in their beds.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Badge of Discrimination

    The British National Health Service has spoken: Wear the badge or declare yourself to be a bigot.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Judicial Takeover of Asylum Policy?

    Thuraissigiam threatens to make both the law and the facts in every petition for asylum—and there are thousands of them—a matter for the courts.
    by Thomas Ascik

  • The Environmental Uncertainty Principle

    By engaging in such flagrant projection, the Times has highlighted once again the problem with groupthink in the climate discussion.
    by Paul Schwennesen

Blogroll

  • Acton PowerBlog
  • Cafe Hayek
  • Cato@Liberty
  • Claremont
  • Congress Shall Make No Law
  • EconLog
  • Fed Soc Blog
  • First Things
  • Hoover
  • ISI First Principles Journal
  • Legal Theory Blog
  • Marginal Revolution
  • Pacific Legal Liberty Blog
  • Point of Law
  • Power Line
  • Professor Bainbridge
  • Ricochet
  • Right Reason
  • Spengler
  • The American
  • The Beacon Blog
  • The Foundry
  • The Originalism Blog
  • The Public Discourse
  • University Bookman
  • Via Meadia
  • Volokh

Archives

  • All Posts & Publications
  • Book Reviews
  • Liberty Forum
  • Liberty Law Blog
  • Liberty Law Talk

About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
  • Contact
  • Archive

© 2021 Liberty Fund, Inc.

This site uses local and third-party cookies to analyze traffic. If you want to know more, click here.
By closing this banner or clicking any link in this page, you agree with this practice.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Necessary Always Enabled

Subscribe
Get Law and Liberty's latest content delivered to you daily
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Close