Six months after Frank Sinatra’s death, a little book on his career was published. Why Sinatra Matters was an insightful account of a career intersecting a culture. It was written by journalist and author Pete Hamill, once called New York newspapers’ “columnist-poet.” If the 59-year-long legacy of the singer from Hoboken mattered to you, you’d probably enjoy this book.

The form of that title might sound familiar. According to one estimate, something like 500 – 1,500 unique authors have used some version of the “Why _____ Matters” template to make the case for someone or something. Philosopher Tamler Sommers upset many moral relativists and  critics with his 2018 work Why Honor Matters, which put personal honor at the core of morality.

In 2002, journalist and essayist Christopher Hitchens, who had come of age as a committed British socialist, wrote Why Orwell Matters. That work — even read from my perspective of conservative politics — clearly mattered. It could be appreciated by a free thinker from any perspective.

Read carefully George Orwell’s future-nightmare novel 1984 (published in 1948) or Animal Farm, his allegory of revolution turned to tyranny. The author’s fables of a dystopia created by authoritarian movements are mor chilling and palpable than any horror movie.