The New Republic

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly FalseBy Thomas Nagel (Oxford University Press, 144 pp., $24.95) I. READ MORE >>

The Mormonizing of America: How The Mormon Religion Became a Dominant Force in Politics, Entertainment, and Pop CultureBy Stephen Mansfield (Worthy Publishing, 264 pp., $22.99)  People of Paradox: A History of Mormon CultureBy Terryl L. Givens (Oxford University Press, 414 pp., $29.99)  Falling in Love with Joseph Smith: My Search for the Real Prophet By Jane Barnes (Tarcher, 294 pp., $25.95) READ MORE >>

Mitt Romney has been running for president as the Republican nominee, de facto or de jure, for eight months now, and the grand historical joke of it has not yet worn off. A party that has set itself to frantically, fanatically expunge its moderates, quasi-moderates, suspected moderates, and fellow travelers of moderates chose as its standard bearer the lineal heir, biographically and genealogically, to its moderate tradition. It entrusted its holy crusade to repeal Barack Obama’s hated health-care law to the man who had inspired it and run, four years before, promising to do the same for the rest of America. The man and his historical moment could not be more incongruous. It was as if the Mongol tribes of the thirteenth century, setting out to pillage their way across the Asian steppe, had somehow chosen Mahatma Gandhi as their supreme khan.Romney’s capture of the nomination required an incredible confluence of good fortune. Any one of several Republicans—Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan—could have outflanked Romney in both grassroots enthusiasm and establishment support but chose not to run. The one candidate with the standing and financial reach to challenge him who did grasp for the prize, Rick Perry, performed his duties with such comic, stammering ineptitude that his final oops-de-grace by that point was not even startling. What remained to challenge Romney was a gaggle of third-raters lacking the money or the rudimentary organization even to get their name on the ballot everywhere. Still, running even against the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum (which is to say, running essentially unopposed), Romney still trudged laboriously to victory after endless weeks.But there is another way to make at least some sense of the Romney nomination. READ MORE >>

Seduction by Contract: Law, Economics, and Psychology in Consumer MarketsBy Oren Bar-Gill (Oxford University Press, 280 pp., $40) WHAT DO people notice? What do they miss? In the late 1990s, the social scientists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons tried to make some progress on these questions by asking people to watch a two-minute movie, in which six ordinary people pass a basketball to one another. The simple task? To count the total number of passes. READ MORE >>

The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy By Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady (Princeton University Press, 693 pp., $35) Oligarchy By Jeffrey A. Winters (Cambridge University Press, 323 pp., $29.99) The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy By David Karpf (Oxford University Press, 237 pp., $27.95) READ MORE >>

Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire By C. A. Bayly (Cambridge University Press, 383 pp., $29.99) Democracy and Its Institutions  By André Béteille (Oxford University Press India, 228 pp., £27.50) I. READ MORE >>

The Iliad of HomerTranslated by Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press, 599 pp., $15) Homer: The IliadTranslated by Anthony Verity (Oxford University Press, 470 pp., $29.95) Homer: The IliadTranslated by Stephen Mitchell (Free Press, 466 pp., $35) Memorial: An Excavation of the IliadBy Alice Oswald (Faber & Faber, 84 pp., £12.99) READ MORE >>

Europe’s Angry Muslims: The Revolt of the Second Generation By Robert S. Leiken (Oxford University Press, 354 pp., $27.95)  After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent By Walter Laqueur (Thomas Dunne Books, 322 pp., $26.99)  READ MORE >>

Law in American History, Volume I: From the Colonial Years Through the Civil WarBy G. Edward White (Oxford University Press, 565 pp., $39.95)  READ MORE >>

Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide By Paul Marshall and Nina Shea (Oxford University Press, 448 pp., $35)  I. In spite of its slightly agitated title, this book is mostly a cool and even-tempered human rights report, and its findings go a long way toward explaining one of the mysteries of our time, namely, the ever-expanding success of political movements with overtly Islamic doctrines and radical programs. READ MORE >>