“The enduring vitality of the reactionary spirit even in the absence of a revolutionary political program,” writes former Member Mark Lilla, arises from the feeling that “to live a modern life anywhere in the world today, subject to perpetual social and technological changes, is to experience the psychological equivalent of permanent revolution.” The New Yorker's Sam Tanenhaus reviews Lilla's The Shipwrecked Mind, a collection of essays on philosophical and religious reaction.

The New Yorker's John Lanchester reviews recent books on the threat of the euro by Nobel Prize-winning economist and former Visitor Joseph Stiglitz and its ideological and historical background by former Visitor Markus Brunnermeier.