A number of years back Touchstone ran a column called “Book Returns.” It was a place for some of our regular writers to revisit books of cultural significance. In cleaning up the archives, I came across some good ones and thought I’d compile this list of all of the Book Returns. There’s something here for everyone…
Urban Bungle (September 2005)
Wilfred M. McClay on Harvey Cox’s The Secular City
The Path Less Beaten (October 2005)
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
by Stephen H. Webb
Near Prophet (November 2005)
Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism
by William Murchison
Untenured Radical (December 2005)
Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society
by Graeme Hunter
Daze of Our Wives (January/February 2006)
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
by Beth Impson
Weapon of Misinstruction (March 2006)
Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb
by Allan Carlson
History Rebuffed (April 2006)
Herbert J. Muller’s The Uses of the Past
by Thomas C. Reeves
Tuning Out the OK Chorale (May 2006)
Eric Berne’s Games People Play & Thomas A. Harris’s I’m OK, You’re OK
by Susan Prudhomme
Moderns Forever Be Holden (July/August 2006)
J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
by Douglas Jones
Wheelin’ Grace (September 2006)
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Franklin Freeman
Life in a Feed Lot (November 2006)
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
by Michael E. Bailey
Alien Notion (December 2006)
John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
by Louis Markos
Weed in the Grass (July/August 2008)
Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America
by Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. & Allan Carlson
The Beat Escape (November 2008)
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
by Anthony Esolen
Wasted by Watching (April 2009)
Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by J. Daryl Charles