Dangers to the Soul
A conversation with Piers Paul ReadPiers Paul Read is an award-winning English author who has produced an array of novels and nonfiction works, including histories and biographies. This interview with Mr. Read was conducted by Karl Schmude, an Australian university...Look Under the Turnip
The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales by Franz Xaver Schönwerth, translated with an introduction and commentary by Maria Tatar. Penguin Classics, 2015. Paperback, 288 pages, $17.In 2012, in Regensburg, Germany, Erica Eichenseer, a cultural curator...The Final Artistic Taboo
After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History by Arthur Danto. Princeton University Press, 1997, 2014. Paperback, 272 pages, $20.“How can someone possessed of learning and culture in the highest degree spread ideas that are entirely inimical to...From the Trenches to the Shire
A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, & Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914–1918. by Joseph Loconte. Thomas Nelson, 2015. Hardcover, 244 pages, $25.Many words have been devoted to the literature and...Books in Little
Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism by Albert Camus. Translated by Ronald Srigely. St. Augustine’s Press, 2015. Hardcover, 176 pages, $27. I have always viewed Christianity as a thorn in the side for Albert Camus. He was constantly fascinated by it, but also...‘Spoken with Sufficient Seriousness’
On April 12, 1656, Pascal began his XI Provincial Letter “To the Reverend Fathers, the Jesuits,” in this manner: “Reverend Fathers, I have seen the letters which you are circulating in opposition to those which I wrote to one of my friends on your morality; and I...Churchill Defends the Gallipoli Campaign
Winston Churchill reportedly once remarked that history would treat him kindly because he intended to write it. Churchill’s efforts to do so failed with respect to the Gallipoli Campaign—the allied attempt during the First World War to force the Dardanelles Strait,...Ethnicity Matters
Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Oxford University Press, 1993. Hardcover, 221 pages, $110. In 1947, Solomon Bloom, a student of Marxism and nationalism, published an article in Commentary entitled “The Peoples of my Home...Norman Lear, Conservative?
Even This I Get to Experience by Norman Lear. Penguin Press, 2014. Hardcover, 448 pages, $33.British comic novelist and television writer Douglas Adams was once asked to explain the difference between a comic writer and a wit. “A wit will think of a funny response at...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!