Order Beyond Adler
The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today by Eric Adler. Oxford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 272 pages, $35. Reviewed by Pavlos Papadopoulos Eric Adler’s Battle of the Classics (2020) and Classics, the Culture...
Content Is Key
The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today by Eric Adler. Oxford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 272 pages, $35. Reviewed by Joshua Kinlaw It is salutary to be reminded that the history of Western education has always...
The Human Story Books
By Dr. Anika T. Prather In These Pages There is so much to glean from the ancient folk There is so much to learn from those who spoke centuries ago It is different for every person How the books connect to the soul But they will if you let them And it may take time to...
Putting Burke into Action
Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 928 pages, $40. Reviewed by James Baresel Few nineteenth-century statesman are as famed for their positive contributions to Europe’s practical politics as...
A Cautionary Tale for Our Loveless World
By Auguste Meyrat At the time of its publication in 1856, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert scandalized audiences by glamorizing adultery and ridiculing marriage and religion. The novel’s story is about Emma Roualt, the wife of a dimwitted country doctor, Charles...
A Splendid War Companion
Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938–1941 By Alan Allport. Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. Hardcover, 590 pages, $35. Reviewed by John P. Rossi There is nothing an author fears more than that his or her book will appear shortly after one with a similar...
Marriage Can Change Everything
Jack: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson. Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2020. Hardcover, 320 pages, $27. Reviewed by J. L. Wall Why, I ask students who are reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, does John Ames never directly give us his wife’s name? It’s only learned late in the...
Worth a Second Reading
Second Readings: Literary, Philosophical & Liturgical Essays by James V. Schall, S.J. American Chesterton Society Books, 2020. Paperback, 293 pages, $14.95. Reviewed by John C. Chalberg Father James Schall is a permanent treasure, a treasure who has now gone on...
Retail Heaven
Convenience Store Woman: A Novel by Sayaka Murata. Grove Press, 2019. Paperback, 176 pages, $15. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet Keiko just wanted to do the right thing. Eager and goal-oriented to a fault, little Keiko Furukura found the world around her baffling, full of...
Timely, for sure. Hope @realdonaldtrump is reading.