I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of the greatest of "pirate scholars," Donald S. Lutz. As it turns out, he had actually passed away back in January of this year, but I only found out about it a week or so ago. I’ve loved the man’s work for a long time, and [...]
Lately, I have found myself increasingly involved in the pioneering adventure of helping to start new schools and colleges in the classical liberal arts tradition. I am on the boards of both Rosary College and another college, the name of which I am not yet at liberty to disclose. The former is a two-year undergraduate [...]
Despite coming close to ruining his life on more than a few occasions, Glenn Loury, Professor of the Social Sciences and Economics at Brown University, has always managed to remain a "Player," both as a professor and as a public intellectual. That dual accomplishment is a testimony to his drive and determination, as well as [...]
She has been called “The Divine Jane,” and who can quibble with that sobriquet? My husband teaches at a college where her Emma is read senior year by every student. I object, but only because I think the work to introduce her in such a universal way ought to be Pride and Prejudice, accessible to [...]
Cara Rogers Stevens has done the history profession proud with her new book, and we owe her a huge thanks for revising our understanding of Thomas Jefferson in terms of his lifelong opposition to slavery. Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, by Cara Rogers Stevens (400 pages, (University Press of Kansas, 2024) As I’ve [...]
Little has changed in the years since Hilaire Belloc departed bodily from King’s Land. The ghost of his powerful absence still dwells in his stead, and the mill that he restored stands tall and erect, and in full working order. The great hills of the South Country They stand along the sea; And it’s there [...]
For many years I’ve been teaching online courses for Red Cultural in Chile. During last week’s session of a course on “Literary Converts”, based on my book of that title, I was asked whether there are still good works of literature being written today. I replied effusively in the affirmative. I was then asked whether [...]
E.F. Schumacher succeeded in popularizing Catholic social teaching in a way that far exceeded the limited success of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton to do the same thing fifty years earlier. It is not often that the publication of a single book can change the perception of millions of people around the world. Small Is Beautiful by [...]
The final word on the legacy of John Fisher and Thomas More, and the final judgment (under God) on why we should see them as heroes, is given by G. K. Chesterton, a man who proves in his very self that the killing of More and Fisher did not kill learning, laughter or holiness: "There [...]
In “Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor,” Richard R. Beeman tells a compelling narrative of the crucial years between the first meeting of the Continental Congress and the announcement of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. He gives concrete examples of the novel ways in which the lines of political and legal [...]
Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were both "Godded-up" to an extreme degree, treated at various times as if they could not err, treatment that author Allen Barra thinks contributed to the fact that neither man ever really grew up. Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball’s Golden Age, By Allen Barra [...]
It’s entirely possible to imagine Theodore Roosevelt becoming President of the United States, even a Rushmore-eligible president, with an entirely different set of female loves. But it’s much less likely. The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President, by Edward F. O’Keefe. (446 pages, Simon and Schuster, 2024) Try as he might, [...]
The Church is not prison but liberation. It is the way of escape—from the cell of the self, from the solipsist nightmare, from the grubbiness of materialism, from the overwhelming fact, in every age, of sin and sorrow. The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961: Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh, by Father Ian Ker [...]
The Catholic Church canonized Saints Thomas More and John Fisher in 1935, only two years after the appearance of "The English Way," a work edited by one of the most important Christian humanists and publishers of the twentieth century, Maisie Ward, and which looks at the lives, ideas, and deaths of the great Roman Catholic [...]