American Religious Freedom: The Revised Story
The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom by Steven D. Smith. Harvard University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 240 pages, $40. In legal scholarship, as in any literature, style matters as much as content. The subjects authors explore, their manners and patterns of...The Humanistic Tradition in Literature
Literary Criticism from Plato to Postmodernism: The Humanistic Alternative by James Seaton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 225 pages, $90.Back when I was a pimple-faced graduate student in English and law, I ordered a book from Amazon titled...How Progressive Is Berlin?
Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom edited by Bruce Baum and Robert Nichols. Routledge, 2013. Hardcover, 284 pages, $130. Among Anglophone political theorists who lived in the twentieth century, Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) stood out for the breadth of his...The Real Great Depression?
The Forgotten Man, Graphic Edition: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. Harper Perennial, 2014. Paperback, 320 pages, $20.Amity Shlaes does not believe in playing it safe. In 2007 she issued the original edition of The Forgotten Man: A New History...Teaching in an Age of Ideology
What does it mean to teach in an age of ideology? At first glance, especially for conservatives, the answer appears to be obvious: to advocate for conservative ideas and principles against the prevailing ideologies of relativism, feminism, multiculturalism, and other...Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Coming of the First World War
The American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan called the First World War the “seminal catastrophe of [the twentieth] century.” Between 1914 and 1918, the major powers of Western civilization waged brutal and unrelenting war against each other, resulting in the...
Betrayal of the Arab Christians
The Last Communion: A Journey among the Abandoned Christians in the Arab World. By Klaus Wivel. Kristeligt Dagblads Forlag (Denmark), 2013. Paperback, 320 pages. In 2011 in the Danish weekly Weekendavisen, journalist Klaus Wivel published an open letter to the foreign...The Philosophies of the Modern Era and the Catholic Church
The Church and the Culture of Modernity By R. J. Divozzo. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011. Paperback, 404 pages, $15.25.Richard Divozzo’s The Church and the Culture of Modernity provides a insightful study of the root causes of the decline in public...Multiculturalism or Clash of Civilizations
The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism by Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederick Stjernfelt. Telos Press, 2012. Paperback, 410 pages, $25. This is an important, even a courageous book, as it challenges the now-hallowed idea of multiculturalism. It examines 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!