The Remaining Western Illusion

by | Jan 19, 2015

Lies, Passions and Illusions: The Democratic Imagination in the Twentieth Century by François Furet. Chicago University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 128 pages, $20.By his own admission François Furet was a Tocquevillian. The label is important and elusive and, for a...

Walter Berns, RIP

by | Jan 15, 2015

Walter Berns, the great constitutional scholar and political theorist, passed away on Saturday, January 10, 2015 at the age of 95. Throughout his long and distinguished career as a scholar and pubic intellectual, a career that included teaching posts at Cornell, Yale,...

A Gentleman of Letters

by | Jan 12, 2015

Selected Letters of Norman Mailer Edited by J. Michael Lennon. Random House, 2014. Hardcover, 867 pages, $40. By any measure, Norman Mailer (1923–2007) is one of the most important writers of post-World War II America. Over seven decades, he produced powerful and...

On Looking for What We Have Been Given

by | Jan 12, 2015

“Giving one Catholicism, God deprives one of the pleasure of looking for it, but here again He has shown His mercy for such a one as myself … who, if it had not been given, would not have looked.” —Flannery O’Connor, September 24, 1947. A former student of mine from...

Fruits of Procrastination

by | Jan 5, 2015

One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper Edited by Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman. Oxford University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 488 pages, $40. Seemingly out of fashion in the internet age, letters have been an important literary genre since the days of St....