Thebes Gets Its Due

Thebes Gets Its Due

Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece by Paul Cartledge. Picador Press, 2020. Hardcover, 287 pages, $30. Reviewed by Clayton Trutor Paul Cartledge makes a compelling case for the centrality of the often “forgotten” city of Thebes to the story of Ancient Greece....
Salvation Through Compassion?

Salvation Through Compassion?

Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption by Roger Scruton. Allen Lane, 2020. Hardcover, 208 pages, £20.00 Reviewed by Paul Krause “We have been called not to explore the world, but to rescue it. In doing so we emerge from our trials and conflicts in full possession...
What Literature Makes Happen

What Literature Makes Happen

E. J. Hutchinson What is literature for? Any number of things, one supposes—pleasure, say, or escape. But does it do anything else? In a frequently used and even more frequently misunderstood phrase, Auden says that “poetry makes nothing happen.”[1] But what if...
Mental Anchors for Information Overload

Mental Anchors for Information Overload

Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs. Penguin Press, 2020. Hardcover, 192 pages, $25. Reviewed by Kevin Holtsberry An old man in an Italian farmhouse muses to his friend: “What brings tranquility? What makes you...
Kierkegaard Is for Lovers

Kierkegaard Is for Lovers

Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Hardback, 339 pages, $30. Reviewed by Asher Gelzer-Govatos It is relatively easy, if perhaps a bit crude, to draw a dividing line between two groups of...