Thucydides’s Challenge
How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy by Thucydides, edited by Johanna Hanink. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 336 pages, $17. Reviewed by Nick Burns If pulled from his grave near the base of the Pnyx Hill, unceremoniously revivified,...
The Same City
RIP James V. Schall, S. J. By Thomas M. Johnson, Jr. At a Knights of Columbus meeting my freshman year at Georgetown University, a fellow student gave me one piece of advice: Major in Fr. Schall. Take as many of his classes as you can. All seven if possible....
An Historian’s Evolving Vision of Mankind
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Spiegel and Grau, 2018. Hardcover, 400 pages, $28. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Yuval Noah Harari is a brilliant historian teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His 2015 bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History...
Unwelcome Information
By James V. Schall, S. J. Recently, Brent Barnes, a friend from Houston, gave me three handsomely bound volumes from a London edition of Samuel Johnson’s essays in The Rambler. Already in 1801 this edition was the fourteenth in this famous series. Barnes found these...
On Unity and Morale with Charles Martel
The Path of the Martyrs: Charles Martel, The Battle of Tours, and the Birth of Europe by Ed West. Sharpe Books, 2019. Paperback and Kindle, 108 pages, $6. Reviewed by Matthew M. Robare In October of 732 a Muslim army composed mostly of light cavalry headed north to...
Through the Lens of Civil Society
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney. Harper, 2019. Hardcover, 368 pages, $28. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro Alienated America, by Washington Examiner editor and journalist Tim Carney, is the latest and most expansive...
Things Strange and Admirable
Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings by Tom Shippey. Reaktion Books, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $30. Reviewed by Timothy D. Lusch It is a mark of our Age of Sensitivity that scholars have tried to turn the murderous Vikings into hygge-loving...
The Time That We Are Given
The Outsiding (A Jo Grant Mystery) by Sally Wright. Amazon Digital Services, 2018. Kindle, 1038 kb, $3. Reviewed by Ashlee Cowles Why do we read fiction? A cynic may claim it’s to avoid reality, but the devoted reader knows better. We read stories, including the...
Between Rome and ‘Jerusalem and Athens’
Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers edited by Geoffrey M. Vaughan. The Catholic University of America Press, 2018. Hardcover, 360 pages, $75. Reviewed by Richard M. Reinsch II Leo Strauss greatly revived the study of political philosophy in the twentieth century and...
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!