In Memoriam: Richard Durant
An ObituaryRichard Durant, a captain in the U.S. Army in World War II; an investment advisor; a leader in local, state, and national Republican Party activities for more than twenty years; a lawyer late in life; an avid reader; a father of four; grandfather of seven;...
What Everybody Can Enjoy
On Essays and LettersRecently, a former student, Nicholas Wheeler, knowing my proclivities, gave me Volume CLXXII of “The World’s Classics.” The title of this particular volume is A Book of English Essays (1600-1900). The essays were selected by Stanley V. Makower and...
Order Gets Physical
The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book One: The Phenomenon of Life by Christopher Alexander Center for Environmental Structure (Berkeley, Calif.) 476 pp., $75.00 cloth, 2002 Traditionalists and others complain about...
Against Postmodernity
Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth by David Bentley Hart William B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Mich.) 448 pp., $36.00 paper, 2003 The Beauty of the Infinite is a complex and subtle work that presents an aesthetic defense of Christian rhetoric...Reasons to Believe
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins Free Press (New York) 304 pp., $26.00 cloth, 2006 Few things cause more excitement among American evangelicals than the discovery that a well-known actor, athlete, or entertainer is a...
History’s Story
A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century by John Burrow Random House (New York) 540 pp., $35.00 cloth, 2007 The past may be another country, as a cliché holds, but it nonetheless remains...
America’s Image Abroad
Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice by Juliana Geran Pilon Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, Md.) 280 pp., $26.95 paper, 2007 The question that Juliana Geran Pilon asks in Why America Is Such a Hard Sell is not at all rhetorical. We are the...
