Bradley J. Birzer

Nietzsche and the Short Nineteenth Century

As Christopher Dawson argued, the nineteenth century proved a short century. When the century began, Thomas Jefferson delivered his gorgeous blueprint for a liberal republican world in the form of the first inaugural address. “But every...

Behold the Demon: Nietzsche as Destroyer

Friedrich Nietzche's Ecce Homo lays waste to centuries of an ethic of inhibition and restraint. Intellectually brutalized, bloodied, and tortured, the nineteenth-century philosopher presented himself in his final and last words to a world he wanted to overthrow. Behold the...

Conflicted But Redeemed: James Como’s Life of C.S Lewis

James Como’s C.S Lewis: A Very Short Introduction is delightful and is the single finest biographical survey yet written on the Oxford don. In a little more than one hundred pages, you’ll happily come to know the complexities of the most famous convert to Christianity in the twentieth...

On Loving the Tools of Writing

In a world that demands and encourages immediate reaction and instantaneous anger, serious writing allows us to turn toward the good, the true, and the beautiful in a meaningful manner, a manner worthy of our ancestors and of...

On Loving Bookstores

Growing up in a small but well-to-do Kansas town, I had access to several local bookshops—used and new—in grade school. Every bookstore offered joys, mysteries, and delights. Rarely have I walked into one and not found some kind of treasure.

On Loving Writing

Few things in life have given me as much pleasure as writing has. I’ve never been what anyone would describe as "low-energy," but I’ve also not always been exactly sure how to release my own energies, especially...

Mark Hollis, Rest Your Head

On February 25, 2019, at age sixty-four, Mark David Hollis passed away. Though he had not been active for more than two decades in the music industry, his death is a great loss to the art world. Hollis was...

Surprised by Jack

C.S. Lewis’s writings are endlessly fascinating because the man himself was endlessly fascinating—to himself as well as to others. He saw life as a sort of drama and art, one in which the will shapes what Providence has so generously provided.

On Loving Research

I loved every moment of the process of research—from the initial stages of utter bewilderment to the compilation of data to imagining and completing the final form of the paper. I knew what I loved, and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. In...

On Loving Definitions

I first came across Russell Kirk’s belief that academics must serve as guardians of “the Word” in his groundbreaking but now sadly-neglected book, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition (1955). “The principle support to academic freedom,...

On Loving Words

Not only is the art of making a book sacred, but, when done well, the words within those books are sacred as well. After all, Christ came as the Word, and words, when properly understood, reflect His eternal glory and dignity, even if confined to ink on...

Christopher Dawson and Time

Christopher Dawson believed that history, far from being cyclical, was instead a particular manifestation of God’s will, and thus was “moving towards a great consummation, the revelation of the power and glory of Yahweh through his servant Israel”…

Christopher Dawson and the Nature of Progress

An understanding of progress and its adherents was not just of academic curiosity to Christopher Dawson. It was central to understanding the good life and preventing those who misunderstood history from gaining control and imposing the will of man upon the creation of God...

Being Christopher Dawson’s Friend

Despite all Christopher Dawson's quirks and social fears, friends flocked to him; together, they read poetry, discussed philosophy, farmed, and made crafts. Would there have been a European renaissance of Christian Humanism without this friendship centered around "Tiger Dawson"? Almost certainly not...