The Marxist Jeremiah
Culture and the Death of God by Terry Eagleton. Yale University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 234 pages, $26.There are few polemicists writing in the English language today as erudite, or as pugnacious, as Terry Eagleton. Nor are there many public intellectuals who so defy...Fiction and Philosophy
On Moral Fiction, by John Gardner. Basic Books, 1977. When you make up a story about America and say that we are the worst killers of all, that we are worse than Russia or China, then . . . well, I think you’ve made up an evil story.” That evaluation of the integrity...Science Fiction Worth Re-Reading?
What Makes This Book so Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy by Jo Walton. Tor, 2014. Hardcover, 447 pages, $27.Insofar as “genre” means commercial formula-fiction, it is safe to say that between the late nineteenth century, when the formulas...An Echo from the Cold War
The Nazis Next Door: How America Became A Safe Haven For Hitler’s Men by Eric Lichtblau. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2014. Hardcover, 231 pages (plus acknowledgments, notes, and index), $28. Write a nonfiction history to read like a novel—offering suspense, interesting...Kirk in the Clarion Review
Russell Kirk’s autobiographical essay, “Is Life Worth Living” is featured in The Clarion Review this month.The Prospect of an Authentic Conservatism
Prospects for Conservatives: A Compass for Rediscovering the Permanent Things by Russell Kirk, with a new introduction by Bradley J. Birzer. Imaginative Conservative Books, 2013. Hardcover, 278 pages, $25.Russell Kirk’s most spirited work, Prospects for Conservatives...Civilization in Davy Jones’s Locker
The Emerging Atlantic Culture by Thomas Molnar. Transaction Publishers, 1994. 110pp., $34.95 cloth. Thomas Molnar has never hesitated to say how horrible he finds America, and the razor edge of his dislike is as sharp here as in a dozen earlier books. It is more of a...How Dwight Became Dwight
Dwight Macdonald on Culture: The Happy Warrior of the Mind, Reconsidered by Tadeusz Lewandowski. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2013. Hardcover, 149 pages, $41. So intensely European was the critic Dwight Macdonald’s spirit, so routinely did he use European...
The Old French Wars
Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763, by Douglas B. Leach. Macmillan (Macmillan Wars of the United States), 1973. 556 pp., $14.95.This is a chronicle of the early years of colonial settlement, with emphasis upon the...
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!