Signs of Contradiction

The Pen and the Cross: Catholicism and English Literature, 1850–2000 by Richard Griffiths. Continuum (London & New York) xii + 260 pp., $35 cloth, 2010.In 1989, Gregory Wolfe uttered a cri de coueur bemoaning academic neglect of the modern “Catholic Intellectual...

A Necessary Symbiosis

America’s Spiritual Capital by Nicholas Capaldi and Theodore Roosevelt Malloch St Augustine’s Press (South Bend, Indiana), 2012. Paper, 176 pages, $17. Over the past thirty years, increasing numbers of social scientists and economists have invested more time in...

Men with Lit Matches

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...

Longshoreman, Philosopher, Mystery

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...

Christopher Lasch, Conservative?

Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch by Eric Miller. Eerdmans, 2010. Cloth, 394 pages, $32. Christopher Lasch (1932–1994) has often posed a categorical problem for conservatives despite his insightful criticisms of liberalism. On many issues,...

The Kind of Man Modernity Can Afford

Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore by Peter L. Berger. Prometheus Books, 2011, 264pp, hardcover, $26.A good friend studied sociology at Boston University where Peter Berger spent much of his career. He recalls...