Forgetting flawed human nature, the reason-worshipper becomes a sort of fundamentalist of the mind, convinced that intellect alone holds the key to wisdom. To know The Conservative Mind is to know the mind of its remarkable author, Russell Kirk. He was an old-fashioned man—courtly, retiring, serene, formal in dress and manner—whose view of the world, proclaimed by [...]
The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961: Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh, by Father Ian Ker, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Father Ian Ker, distinguished theologian, literary critic, and biographer, has not been idle since the publication of his acclaimed life of John Henry Newman in 1988. Books, articles, and reviews [...]
To know The Conservative Mind is to know the mind of its remarkable author, Russell Kirk. He was an old-fashioned man—courtly, retiring, serene, formal in dress and manner—whose view of the world, proclaimed by every photograph, was traditional, anti-modern, even obscure. Captured in his study, his library, his home, surrounded by pens, books, family, and friends, he [...]
Historians come in all different shapes and sizes. The well-known ones, those mass-market storytellers we invite into our homes by way of television or bestseller, display enough variety to suit most tastes. There’s David McCullough, courtly and urbane as a Renaissance bishop; Ken Burns, bearded and earnest in the required PBS manner; Michael Beschloss, bronzed [...]
Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio, Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation, by David L. Schindler Queen Victoria’s first prime minister, William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, cultivated an elegant indifference to matters of the soul. “Things have come to a pretty pass,” he once remarked, “when religion is permitted to invade the sphere of private [...]