by James Baresel | Jan 31, 2021
Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 928 pages, $40. Reviewed by James Baresel Few nineteenth-century statesman are as famed for their positive contributions to Europe’s practical politics as...
by Auguste Meyrat | Jan 31, 2021
By Auguste Meyrat At the time of its publication in 1856, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert scandalized audiences by glamorizing adultery and ridiculing marriage and religion. The novel’s story is about Emma Roualt, the wife of a dimwitted country doctor, Charles...
by John P. Rossi | Jan 31, 2021
Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938–1941 By Alan Allport. Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. Hardcover, 590 pages, $35. Reviewed by John P. Rossi There is nothing an author fears more than that his or her book will appear shortly after one with a similar...
by J. L. Wall | Jan 24, 2021
Jack: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson. Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2020. Hardcover, 320 pages, $27. Reviewed by J. L. Wall Why, I ask students who are reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, does John Ames never directly give us his wife’s name? It’s only learned late in the...
by Chuck Chalberg | Jan 24, 2021
Second Readings: Literary, Philosophical & Liturgical Essays by James V. Schall, S.J. American Chesterton Society Books, 2020. Paperback, 293 pages, $14.95. Reviewed by John C. Chalberg Father James Schall is a permanent treasure, a treasure who has now gone on...