The West above all developed the capacity for self-reflection and self-criticism, acknowledging that what is, if wicked or decrepit, can be changed or replaced, and that what is not, however improbable or preposterous, can be brought into being. This recognition filled the world with a host of new possibilities. To many in the United States [...]
Prohibition had cultivated both a growing mistrust and a growing acceptance of state power. It was becoming not only a legal and political mechanism to regulate personal habits and to modify social customs but also a means to impose cultural unity. Whatever dangers it posed to liberty, government regulation was by the 1920s a fact [...]
In the process of taming the wilderness of the New World by violent means, Americans absorbed and bequeathed to future generations some of the savagery that they determined to eliminate. Their purpose was to establish and maintain a civilization, but we have now lost this sense of purpose. Savagery is the product, then, not of [...]
Having lost both their identity as a people and their assurance of a better future, Americans suffer a profound uncertainty and desperation from which they cannot easily free themselves and from which they may not soon recover. I. Americans like to think of their country as unique. For a time it was. Americans were the [...]
Beethoven’s eccentricities only enhanced his reputation. They confirmed the divine madness that propelled his creative genius. He was a martyr to his art, a new kind of saint whose agonies and ecstasies brought him neither peace of mind nor purity of soul, but an admixture of public renown and disrepute. Sculpture by Max Klinger [...]
In the course of telling the story of a people and a country in “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck offers an unforgettable evaluation of the American desire to enter the Promised Land. But Steinbeck’s garden is Eden after the fall dominated by the expectation of hardship, suffering, and death. In such a world, men [...]
"This wasn't written for you!" Beethoven once stormed at string players who complained that one of his quartets was impossible to play. "It was meant for a later age!" And so all Beethoven's works are. They are, indeed, music for all time. Please enjoy this symposium on Ludwig van Beethoven, with contributions from our distinguished [...]
Whatever respite or solace Calvin Coolidge may temporarily have conferred upon the nation, Americans during the 1920s could not keep the world from turning. The system of limited government and economic deregulation that he had cultivated was elegantly false and perilously flawed, carrying within it the seeds of its own dissolution. I. For an administration [...]
The Great War altered relations between the state and its citizens. The Progressives had inspired—or perhaps, more accurately, had revived—fears that regulation was necessary if modern society were to reach its potential and not descend into chaos. They had advocated state intervention to solve a host of social and economic problems and, ultimately, to create [...]
Please enjoy this symposium on the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, with contributions from our distinguished panel, including composer Michael Kurek and Principal Trumpet of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Balio. Clicking on the CD cover art next to each symphony will guide you to a listening recommendation on Spotify; at the bottom of [...]
The Spanish Flu had arisen without warning and was especially virulent. It challenged established knowledge about the nature of such diseases, killing not the young and the old, but instead men and women who were in the prime of life. Not only did doctors struggle to treat it, but they were also at a loss [...]
Teaching at a time when civilization is in such obvious disarray and such marked decline imposes even more stringent and pressing obligations on the teacher. I have reached the conclusion that what American teachers must do is really very basic: Teach young men and women how to read and write, how to imagine beyond themselves, [...]
The new economy that emerged after 1921 seemed to relegate to the past such painful depressions as the one that troubled the United States during the immediate postwar years. As the 1920s drew to a close, however, the movement toward a new economy was about to encounter impediments that made a mockery of efforts to [...]
During the 1920s, America made the first excursion into mass affluence in the history of the world. However, the ethic of consumption that reached its apex in the 1920s fomented a subtle transformation not only of the American economy but also of American culture. I Long considered the haven of corrupt public officials and rapacious [...]