A Cautionary Tale for Our Loveless World

A Cautionary Tale for Our Loveless World

By Auguste Meyrat At the time of its publication in 1856, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert scandalized audiences by glamorizing adultery and ridiculing marriage and religion. The novel’s story is about Emma Roualt, the wife of a dimwitted country doctor, Charles...
Finding a Different Self

Finding a Different Self

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman. Crossway, 2020. Hardcover, 425 pages, $35. Reviewed by Lance Kinzer If a modern day Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1960 and woke...
The Risks of Levity

The Risks of Levity

Milan Kundera, Ambiguous Prophet Trevor C. Merrill “Those no longer able to see reality with their own eyes are equally unable to hear correctly,” writes Josef Pieper. “It is specifically the man thus impoverished who inevitably falls prey to the demagogical spells of...
The Ancient-Modern Quarrel over Tragedy

The Ancient-Modern Quarrel over Tragedy

Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us By Simon Critchley. Vintage Books, 2020. Paperback, 322 pages. $17. Reviewed by Grant Havers The day after the passing of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965, Leo Strauss delivered a philosophical eulogy to his students, contrasting “the...
Thebes Gets Its Due

Thebes Gets Its Due

Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece by Paul Cartledge. Picador Press, 2020. Hardcover, 287 pages, $30. Reviewed by Clayton Trutor Paul Cartledge makes a compelling case for the centrality of the often “forgotten” city of Thebes to the story of Ancient Greece....