The Lost Art of Memento Mori

The Lost Art of Memento Mori

Meditations on Death: Preparing for Eternity By Thomas à Kempis. Translated by Fr. Robert Nixon, OSB. TAN Books, 2023. Hardcover, 88 pages, $19.95.  Reviewed by Thomas Banks. To scratch an itch of curiosity, I recently entered the word “Death” into the Amazon search...
Fundamentally Religious and Catholic

Fundamentally Religious and Catholic

Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography by Holly Ordway. Word on Fire Academic, 2023. Hardcover, 532 pages, $ 34.95. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. J. R. R. Tolkien famously described The Lord of the Rings as a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work.”...
A Contemporary Literary Work of the Moral Imagination

A Contemporary Literary Work of the Moral Imagination

The Professor’s Dog and Other Stories  By David B. Schock. PenUltimate, Ltd., 2022. Paperback, 155 pages, $11.95. Reviewed by Jonathan R. Eller.  David B. Schock’s wide-ranging career as a newspaper editor, filmmaker, and non-fiction author draws inspiration from a...
Must the University Be Political?

Must the University Be Political?

The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s By Ellen Schrecker. University of Chicago Press, 2021. Hardcover, 616 pages, $35. Reviewed by Ethan Schrum. Should academic departments and scholarly societies issue position statements on current political matters?...
What Do Fungi Have to Do with Athens?

What Do Fungi Have to Do with Athens?

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures By Merlin Sheldrake. Random House, 2020. Hardcover, 368 pages, $28. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet. There are fungi that hunt their prey. Fungi can communicate, trade, and defend. They...
Perspicuity at the Bar of History

Perspicuity at the Bar of History

The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity  By Casey J. Chalk. Emmaus Road Publishing, 2023. Hardcover, 320 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Tyler Curtis. In 1925, when John T. Scopes was on trial for teaching...