Book Reviews

White River Crossing by Ian McGuire

Crown Publishing

February 24, 2026

279 pages.

An assessment by Mr. Review.

Admittedly, Ian McGuire is an acquired taste. This notable British author, academic and literary critic has been recognized and criticized for his embrace of literary realism. McGuire’s latest, White River Crossing, is no exception. This brutal piece of historical fiction is set in the harshest of environments of the Canadian Hudson Bay region during the mid-18th century. There is realism aplenty. Sentimentality will not be found. For this reason, many leave reading McGuire with a dose of disappointment. It was these readers that T.S. Eliot must have had in mind when he wrote, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” Bear with McGuire, he is one of our finest novelists.

To understand this book, and more specifically Ian McGuire, one might consider his earliest effort at nonfiction. McGuire wrote the definitive biography of another novelist who practiced pragmatic realism, Richard Ford and the Ends of Realism(2015). Ford gained notoriety for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Independence Day (1995). Ford’s commitment to realism, as opposed to his romantic forebearers, builds rich narratives filled with recognizable characters, plausible plots and social texture. His stories lack those a-ha moments. There will be no abrupt revelations. No deep metaphysical truths revealed. The ordinary, for Ford, is where people live. All characters, no matter their lot in life, receive dignity. In Independence Day a character states:

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon... You tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't".

For Ford and his characters, the most important acts of agency involve survival and self-help. Ian McGuire not only writes about Ford’s literary realism but certainly follows his example in his own work. White River Crossing is his best effort yet.

This fictional story takes place in a faithful rendering of a 1760s sub-Arctic Canadian wilderness. It starts in the Prince of Wales Fort along the Hudson Bay. The Englishman who currently oversee this remote trading post have organized a secret expedition to find rumored gold in the vast wilderness to their north. It is an environment that tests the bravest and would require the help of indigenous guides who have their own complex relationships to navigate. As the expeditionary group drives deeper into the wilderness, they are confronted with scarcity of both supplies and character. Confrontations between the aims and outcomes of the Englishman are only part of the story. Conflict between hostile and unfriendly Northern Indians and Inuit bands only make this expedition anything but romantic. It all feels so real.

McGuire has noted that the best stories are both plausible and surprising. By placing this story in a world far removed from our own, we realize how similar the human condition is. It also lives up to what Hilary Mantel described as the benefit of this type of literature when she wrote, “History offers us vicarious experience.” Even when characters in unfamiliar context continue to make bad choices, we are left with something all too recognizable. The seeking of gold drives this story, but the allusive quest for survival is so much more valuable. It was as if another great realist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was whispering breath into every character in this book: “Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.” This spirit struck me as I turned every page without stopping.

On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All by Arnoud S.Q. Visser

Princeton University Press

November 4, 2025

344 pages.

An assessment by Mr. Review.

As a young boy the hilarious TV comedy Get Smart, starring Don Adams as Agent 86, made no excuses about what it was poking fun at. The idea of a secret agent, aka James Bond, with incredible gadgets, an unyielding physical prowess along with an infallible problem-solving ability may entertain us but it is ludicrous. Getting smart is overrated. Get Smart was making fun of us for thinking otherwise. This idea is not just fodder for comedy; there is no shortage of serious academic works that have documented our affinity for anti-intellectualism. If you are interested start with Richard Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (19630. Next read The Death of Expertise (2017) by Tom Nichols. And do not forget Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason (2009). Yet do I dare say authoritatively, add another to this list. Read Arnoud S.Q. Visser’s On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All.

Visser, the academic director of the Dutch Huizinga Institute is a notable historian with a keen eye for cultural relevance. The fact of the matter is that anti-intellectualism is currently in vogue not just in the United States, but globally. And frankly, this is nothing new. Visser traces this narrative going all the way back to ancient Greece when the new upstart teachers, the Sophists, who were once admired but ultimately became targets of great disrepute. This disdain for the Sophists was rooted in their fallacious reasoning and use of eristics. They argued for the sake of argument. Socrates accused them of being relativists and seekers of glory rather than truth. These devious sophists became pedantic. They flaunted their knowledge, were community show-offs but did little to help. Visser points out these pedantic characteristics: intellectual pretension, obscure language, fault finding, blame giving occupation with trivial knowledge. These characteristics may have been first labeled by the ancient Greeks, but they still find a residence in our world today. 

Visser’s readable narrative surveys the cynics of the Roman period, the medieval Scholastics, the foolish humanists of the Renaissance, the savants of the Enlightenment, the effete elitists of the revolutionary world and the mad scientists of the modern era. A leading take away from this entertaining display of erudition is the remarkable continuity of these historical tropes. It is not that we hate smarts. We hate it when the know-it-alls abuse their talents for malicious purposes and nefarious ends. We hold in contempt pedantry.

As a teacher himself, Visser concludes with an important lesson. He writes:

Recurrent strategies and stereotyping and caricaturing reveal that pedants are not unique to their own environments. They point to a cultural script about appropriate and inappropriate uses of intellect.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky said it similarly: “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.” But read carefully between the lines here. Ignorance is not bliss. We need to get smart. Thomas Jefferson put it this way: “There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents…There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents…”

It does not take long to look around our world to see a small cadre of billionaires who yield unprecedented power and authority. One can even call himself President. We grant them unimaginable privileges because we think they have somehow earned it. We overlook their vices and inappropriate behaviors. We grant them the keys to our cities and let them design policies that further enrich themselves. They are modern day sophists. They are guilty of pedantry. They are exactly what Visser spends 344 pages describing. In no small way, with their pedantic behavior, they are intellectual pirates.

Maybe we learn best through our amusements. This reminds me of “Major-General’s Song.” “Major-General’s Song” is a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. The pedantic polymath is rib-tickling from the opening stanza: 

"I am the very model of a modern General
I've information vegetable, animal and mineral.
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse."

What makes this so tragically funny is that we all know that person, or someone much like him. Maybe you voted for someone like him. Maybe you are that person.

Oh no, am I that person for quoting lines from The Pirates of Penzance to make a point? Good grief. Agent 86 would have said, “Sorry about that, Chief.”

Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling by Danny Funt

Gallery Books

January 20, 2026

320 pages.

An assessment by Mr. Review.

Bet you did not know this, the word has always been associated with wrongdoing, misconduct and transgression. The word “bet” can be traced all the way back into the 16thcentury. It was associated with crime. The idea of wagering and gambling, however, goes back even before written history. Archaeologists have found numbered dice in nearly every and all civilizations. Seemingly gambling, gaming and laying down bets has been all too commonplace throughout history. 

Yet so too were laws prohibiting and regulating the act of gambling. Ancient Egypt and its laws had strict language limiting the act of wagering. China did also. The Roman Emperor Justinian in his Codex went so far as to make dice games illegal and provided the means for any gambling losses to be recovered, even fifty years later. Every major religious system has strong language against wagering. The first law in America limiting gambling was passed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638. This law outlawed the possession of playing cards, dice and gambling devices. The spirit of these laws remained constant up until our lifetime. My have things changed.

Commercial sports betting is now legal in at least 38 states and Washington D.C. The U.S. sports gambling industry alone, in the last year, generated nearly $150 billion worth of wagers. An estimated 25% of U.S. adults actively place sports bets. The highest sports gambling rates are among Gen-Z, Millennial and male participants. Roughly 95% of all sports gamblers lose money, overall. Reportedly, 30% of sports bettors carry debt. Upwards to 10 million Americans suffer from some level of gambling disorder. Problem gambling is associated with the highest suicide rate of any addiction.

Who can we thank for this? Surprisingly, the United States Supreme Court.

First, let me digress. Danny Funt’s book Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling provides an excellent primer on these issues. Funt poses an important set of questions to frame this story: “What do we stand to gain, and what are we willing to lose?” Funt tries to wade through the research. He follows the rise of two leaders in the industry, FanDuel and Draft Kings. Stories of athletes fixing contests is haunting to all of us who love the game. The book also details the gambling industry’s attempt to insulate itself from criticism. “Gambling can’t be a problem as long as you can afford it,” is one of their claims. And the omnipresence of the remarkably cruel and vague mantra - “bet responsibly.” The book fails by being far more descriptive than prescriptive. Most such books do this. Funt does close the book by bluntly saying, “A more politically convenient revenue stream for states then raising taxes? If that’s all we stand to win, it will seem to me like an extraordinary price to have paid.” 

The price we have paid, in the end, goes far beyond the damage rendered by gambling. The U.S. Supreme Court has been exposed for being just as political, just as attune to public opinion, and willingness to be corrupted as their other two dysfunctional branches. And worse, they cloak it in dogmatic legalese that hides their hypocrisy and two-faced double-standards. Shame on you and shame on us for not noticing.

The U.S. Supreme Court case that obliterated the damn and released the waters of sports gambling anytime, anyplace and at any cost was Murphy vs. NCAA (2018). This case knocked down numerous precedents but was specially asked to rule unconstitutional The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (1992) a recent law passed by Congress. They did this with remarkable ease. In doing so they ruled unconstitutional any federal law that prohibited states from authorizing sports betting. The 6-3 decision with a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito relied heavily on the “anticommandeering” principle. Alito wrote:

“The anticommandeering doctrine may sound arcane, but it is simply the expression of a fundamental structural decision incorporated into the Constitution, i.e., the decision to withhold from Congress the power to issue orders directly to the States.”

Alito and his fellow five justices concurred that the Tenth Amendment inspired “anticommandeering” principle protects liberty, promotes accountability and prevents Congress from shifting costs of regulation to the states. In the abstract this sounds politically correct. Yet it does not require a legal scholar to think of a few examples where Congress and its laws in fact do quite the opposite. There are no shortages of examples where Congress issues orders directly to the States. Here are just a few: Medicaid administration, Occupational Safety Codes, education policy, immigration enforcement, and most recently Real ID.

The Court acted in error. Now we face the fall out. Not only is the integrity of our favorite game in doubt, not only are millions suffering from addiction, not only has a generation been raised on the profitability of idleness but our Court and its malfeasance have been exposed. The Court, created to protect us has done great harm. Danny Funt’s book Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling tells some of this story. Feeling certain that betting on a terrible end is already a done deal.

Rasputin Swims the Potomac by Ben Fountain

Flatiron Books

June 9, 2026

416 pages.

An assessment by Mr. Review.

If you have not watched the Jimmy Stewart film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) you need to. Stewart stars as Jefferson Smith, a somewhat naïve remote Boy Scout of a man, who finds himself appointed to serve as a U.S. Senator. While in office Smith is expected to simply defer to his state’s other senior senator who is bank rolled by a corrupt political machine. The simpleton Smith is aghast at what he finds behind the curtain in DC and defies his mentors by taking on the machine and winning in a remarkable nod to idealistic democrat practice. The film is based on an unpublished story by Lewis R. Foster who took as his source material from the exploits of Senator Barton K. Wheeler. Senator Wheeler, from the sticks of Montana, exposed the corrupt Warren G. Harding Administration.

When producers of the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington submitted their script to the Hollywood censors they were warned: "[W]e would urge most earnestly that you take serious counsel before embarking on the production of any motion picture based on this story…The generally unflattering portrayal of our system of Government, which might well lead to such a picture being considered, both here, and more particularly abroad, as a covert attack on the Democratic form of government.”  The film was made, nonetheless, and many Washington insiders pushed to obstruct a wide release.

How far we have come. Or have we?

The outrageously funny or tragic storyline behind Ben Fountain’s new political satire Rasputin Swims the Potomac makes the plot of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington look like child’s play. In this book the current openly corrupt president is appalled that he faces a challenge from within his own party to his unprecedented third term. The challenger is professional wrestler turned Russian Orthodox faith healer who goes by the stage name of Rasputin. All sorts of illegal manipulations, media obstructions and obvious abuses of power by the president cannot impede the dawning of Rasputin’s “New Awakening.” When it is exposed that Rasputin is really Patrick Strickland, and he is carrying on an affair with the president’s wife one might expect that public opinion might change. Rather, this WWE athlete claims a penitent heart and will serve his penance by swimming a grueling course in the Potomac River. If he succeeds it will be the Lord’s will for him to remain in the race and become president. A kayfabe script has never been more dramatic. Especially when the sitting president unleashes all sorts of attempts to prevent Rasputin from succeeding.

The book is filled with historical references both current and old that perhaps only political junkies will pick up. Nevertheless, in fiction, we read the truth. Fountain is basing this storyline on events and personalities that we have watched and listened to each night on the news. Fountain redacts in the text every time the president is named. It would be easy to fill in that blank with the name Trump. Granted, fictional political tales are not for everyone. But a quick survey of the classics in this genre all shares something in common. For me those classics are Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men (1946), Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent (1959) and Anonymous’ (Joe Klein) Primary Colors (2006). All these books, and many others like them, expose the corruption that has always been hidden behind the loyalty oath of American exceptionalism. American politics and professional wrestling have always shared a kinship to staging events and passing them off as real.

When Mr. Smith Goes to Washington hit the silver screen there was outrage. As there was when the books mentioned above were published. When Senator Wheeler exposed the Harding Administration, he was later investigated by the Justice Department and accused of being a communist. 

You might read this book and simply say, “Ho-hum.” But then again, maybe your own inner Jefferson Smith might whisper in your ear and say, “enough is enough.” Here, We the People still rule.