The Traditions That Gave Us Homer

The Traditions That Gave Us Homer

Hearing Homer’s Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry By Robert Kanigel. Knopf, 2021. Hardcover, 336 pages, $28.95. Reviewed by J. L. Wall. It can be difficult to escape the image of Homer as blind bard and near-inventor of human literature. Just glance at...
Whose Truth? Whose Power? 

Whose Truth? Whose Power? 

Slave State: Rereading Orwell’s 1984  by David Lowenthal. St. Augustine’s Press, 2021. Paperback, 100 pages, $14. Reviewed by Robert Grant Price. It is impossible to mention George Orwell’s name, let alone write about him (i.e., such and such is “Orwellian”), without...
Two Tales of Watergate

Two Tales of Watergate

Watergate: A New History By Garrett M. Graff. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2022. Hardcover, 832 pages, $35. The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President By Geoff Shepard.  Bombardier Books, 2021. Hardcover, 384 pages, $30. Reviewed...
These Roman Things

These Roman Things

David Jones and Rome: Reimagining the Decline of Western Civilization by Jasmine Hunter Evans. Oxford University Press, 2022. Hardcover, 432 pages, $115. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. In 1964, poet-painter David Jones lamented changes underway in the Roman Catholic...
All That’s Left is This Foundation Stone

All That’s Left is This Foundation Stone

The Commonwealth: Poems By Dan Rattelle. Little Gidding Press, 2022. Paperback, 34 pages, $9.99. Reviewed by Joshua Hren. Wordsworth’s complaint in the Lyrical Ballads Preface (1800) might well have been written last Tuesday at 2:00 a.m. (lost already among too many...