Everyone Worships
Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World by Tara Isabella Burton. PublicAffairs, 2020. Hardcover, 279 pages, $28. Reviewed by Scott D. Moringiello Bookman readers are likely to know Tara Isabella Burton from her op-ed in the New York Times entitled...
The Power Has Flowed Away
Serotonin: A Novelby Michel Houellebecq. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 320 pages, $27. Reviewed by Zak Slayback “Did we yield to the illusion of individual freedom, of an open life, of infinite possibilities? It’s possible,” Michel Houellebecq’s...
Hope for a Rebirth of Common Sense in the Academy?
Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right Edited by Lee Trepanier and Grant Havers. Lexington Books, Political Theory for Today Series, 2019. Cloth, 202 pages, $95. Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser There’s a famous aphorism often wrongly attributed to Oscar Wilde,...
Lessons from a Forgotten Papacy
The Pearl of Great Price: Pius VI & the Sack of Rome by Christian Browne. Arouca Press, 2020 Paperback, 146 pages, $16.95 Review by David G. Bonagura, Jr. American knowledge of the Roman Catholic papacy does not run deep. It begins in the fifth century with Pope...
The Substance of Style
Farnsworth’s Classical English Style by Ward Farnsworth. David R. Godine, 2020 Hardcover, 145 pages, $27.95 Reviewed by Cory L. Andrews Bad and lazy writing, George Orwell famously insisted, betrays bad and lazy thinking. It also burdens and alienates the reader, who...
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!