2024 in Review: A Banner Year for the Kirk Center
2024 in Review: A Banner Year for the Kirk Center 2024 was a banner year in terms of the Kirk Center’s impact. We’re grateful for the goodwill and support of many friends around the nation and world who helped us take significant steps forward last year....
Proverbs, Virtues, and Callings
Commentary on Proverbs By Philip Melanchthon. Translated and edited by Derek Cooper and Timothy J. Wengert. CLP Academic, 2023. Hardcover, 282 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Manfred Svensson. Who has the most ancient wisdom? Are Christians plundering “the gold of the...
Cabrini: The Humble Saint Behind the Film
Letters From the Voyages of St. Frances Cabrini By St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Edited by Michael A. LaMorte. Catholic Treehouse, 2024. Paperback, 380 pages, $19.99. Reviewed by Isaiah Flair. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given...
The Fessio Phenomenon
Father Joseph Fessio, S.J.: California Blackrobe By Cornelius Michael Buckley. S.J. Ignatius Press, 2024. Hardcover, 379 pages, $27.95. Reviewed by Lee Oser. “Fessio.” The name has become a test. The first card the reviewer lays on the table will evoke a smile or a...
Transmitting Western Civilization Through Education
On Being Civilized: A Few Lines Amid the Breakage By Tracy Lee Simmons. Memoria College Press, 2023. Paperback, 281 pages, $15.45. Reviewed by Darrell Falconburg. “What is civilization?” When confronted with what appears to be civilizational disintegration, many...
The Divine Inspiration of Handel’s Messiah
Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah By Charles King. Doubleday, 2024. Hardcover, 352 pages, $32.00. Reviewed by Rev. Dr. Karl C. Schaffenburg. Joyeuses Fêtes! as a seasonal greeting is no more silly than “Happy Holidays!”,...
Buckley at 100: At Sea with William F. Buckley Jr.
Airborne: A Sentimental Journey (1976) Atlantic High: A Celebration (1982) Racing Through Paradise: A Pacific Passage (1987) WindFall: The End of the Affair (1992) Reviewed by Bill Meehan. William F. Buckley Jr., a friend of Russell Kirk, circulated The University...
Roadmap for Downsizing the Administrative State
American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism By Ned Ryun. Encounter Books, 2024. Paperback, 176 pages, $19.99. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks. In American Leviathan, Ned Ryun offers a cogent overview of the origins,...
To Awaken the Uneasy Sleeper: New Vistas on Russell Kirk’s Fiction
The Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination By Camilo Peralta. Vernon Press, 2024. Hardcover, 222 pages, $78.00. Reviewed by James E. Person Jr. The late Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was one of the wisest yet humblest of men one could...
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!