The Necessity for a General Culture

by | Jun 1, 2018

“What Does Culture Mean?” From America’s British Culture, pp. 1–3 This slim book is a summary account of the culture that the people of the United States have inherited from Britain. Sometimes this is called the Anglo-Saxon culture—although it is not simply English,...
The Auroras of Helen Vendler

The Auroras of Helen Vendler

by | May 27, 2018

The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: essays on poets & poetry by Helen Vendler. Harvard University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 444 pages, $35. DANIEL JAMES SUNDAHL Helen Vendler’s The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar opens with a twelve-page account of her life as a...
The Cinema of Failure

The Cinema of Failure

by | May 27, 2018

Four films of Terrence Malick. TITUS TECHERA Terrence Malick is American cinema’s one Christian artist and he has now reached his most productive years, his Social Security years. His four recent movies, The Tree of Life (2011), To the Wonder (2012), Knight of...
Stories of the Lost, Wandering Soul of Modern America

Stories of the Lost, Wandering Soul of Modern America

by | May 27, 2018

Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories by Thomas McGuane. Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Cloth, 354 pages, $35. JAMES E. PERSON JR. The short stories of Thomas McGuane can be summarized in the words of John Gay’s self-chosen epitaph: “Life is a jest, and all things shew it; /...
Feeding the Little Platoons

Feeding the Little Platoons

by | May 23, 2018

Frederick the Great observed that his army marched on its stomach. If we aim to civilize, not conquer, what should we feed Burke’s little platoons? At her first dinner party, Agnes Jekyll entertained John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, and Robert Browning. This is a bit...
The ‘Woke’ History of Democracy

The ‘Woke’ History of Democracy

by | May 20, 2018

Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought by James T. Kloppenberg. Oxford University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 912 pages, $35. James Kloppenberg has produced an important artifact of contemporary intellectual life. Conservative...
What Exactly Do We Agree On?

What Exactly Do We Agree On?

by | May 20, 2018

“Oh, you snuck in so quietly,” she says, hurrying to help you find your name tag in a pile on a table in the hall of the University Club’s second floor. You are late, and so ascertain which door will let you in at the back and not the front by the speakers before you...
Saving What Is Lost

Saving What Is Lost

by | May 20, 2018

By Maria Grizzetti Five hundred years before Christ walked on earth Euripides was writing dramatic lines for Hecuba, Queen of Troy, in his Trojan Women. Thinking herself betrayed by the gods, she refuses them worship, yet as she grieves the death of her son, she...
The Best Classical Latin Poet You’ve Never Heard Of

The Best Classical Latin Poet You’ve Never Heard Of

by | May 20, 2018

The Elegies of Maximianus translated by A. M. Juster. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Hardcover, 240 pages, $65. MICHAEL FONTAINE Before he killed himself, I befriended an old man some years ago who had published several books on the right to death and the...

Greenspan’s Intermezzo

by | May 6, 2018

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby. Penguin Books, 2016, 2017. Paperback, 781 pages, $22. Gilbert NMO Morris Biography is an interplay of perceptible and surprising cross-currents, and the life of Alan Greenspan is no...