On Essays and LettersProbably the most famous letter writer of the ancient world was Cicero. In 59 B.C., Cicero wrote to Gaius Scribonius: “There are many sorts of letters. But there is one unmistakable sort, which actually caused letter-writing to be invented in the...
Fahrenheit 451, The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition by Ray Bradbury. Simon & Schuster, 2003. 208 pages, hardcover, $23.In the spring of 1950, in the basement of the UCLA library, Ray Bradbury recorded the future on a coin-operated typewriter by typing out what would...
Ray Bradbury, a close friend of Russell Kirk, died on June 5, 2012 at age 91 in Los Angeles. He was the author of numerous novels and stories beloved by several generations of readers worldwide, especially The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine,...
Russell Kirk on Ray Bradbury, on the occasion of the death of Bradbury.A close friend of Russell Kirk, Ray Bradbury died on June 5, 2012 at age 91 in Los Angeles. He was the author of numerous novels and stories beloved by several generations of readers worldwide,...
This article is the second of two parts and is based on a talk delivered to a Colloquium on Statesmanship and the Constitution at the Rochester Institute of Technology, April 13–14, 2012. Part One is here.So now we come to the crux of the issue: statesmanship means...
Redeeming the Time by Russell Kirk. Edited with an introduction by Jeffrey O. Nelson. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996, 321 pp., $25 cloth, $15 paper. This posthumously published collection of Russell Kirk’s essays once again reminds us of the extent of our...
Paul Fussell, R.I.P. Paul Fussell died on May 23, 2012 at Medford, Oregon, aged 88. His smack-in-the-jaw prose makes it appear incredible that he should have succumbed to natural causes. A far more appropriate quietus for so aggressive a wordsmith would have been a...
This article is the first of two parts and is based on a talk delivered to a Colloquium on Statesmanship and the Constitution at the Rochester Institute of Technology, April 13–14, 2012.What kind of person is worthy of being called a “statesman”? What type of...
The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism by Bruce Frohnen. University Press of Kansas, 1996. vii + 271 pp., $30 cloth.In seven concisely written chapters, Bruce Frohnen has captured in The New Communitarians the misguided arrogance and deceit of...
Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell. Hoover Institution Press, 2012. Hardcover, 328 pages, $30.None of Eric Hoffer’s ten slim and streamlined books allowed room for photographic inserts. His biography, Tom Bethell’s Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman...
Taking Movies Seriously, Perhaps Too Seriously
Thomas Banks on "The Screen and the Mirror: What Movies Show Us About Ourselves, the World, and God" by Gina Dalfonzo.