In the first volume of his three-volume biography, "Becoming Ray Bradbury," Jonathan R. Eller draws upon his friendship with Bradbury as well as upon a myriad of primary sources to write one of the best biographies of the famous author that I’ve yet encountered. Becoming Ray Bradbury, by Jonathan R. Eller (360 pages, University of [...]
Historical consciousness and the attendant self-knowledge show what man has become, what he has made of himself, not only through his deeds but also, and more importantly, through the contemplation of what he has been. Together these insights potentially constitute the foundation of a new humanism, encouraging us to turn backward and inward rather than [...]
T.S. Eliot’s “Ash-Wednesday,” a monumental work—the Purgatorio between the Inferno of “The Waste-land” and the Paradiso of the “Four Quartets”—has always been, as long as I can remember in my adult life, a comfort and a mystery to me. I assume it remained as such even to the Great Bard of the Twentieth Century himself. [...]
The American frontier has served for centuries as a mythic stage as well as the perfect mirror, offering up a reflection—for good and for ill—of who and what we have been since the arrival of Columbus in 1492. One of my all-time favorite scholars, Don Lutz, had this to say about the symbols that form [...]
In our world of recriminating hatreds—in which we desire more to label those we don’t like as sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and, simultaneously, mark ourselves as victims—we often forget some important historical truths. Here’s one we conveniently ignore, dismiss, or mock: Nothing in the world has brought about more equality and justice than has [...]
Perhaps more than any other figure in the early history of the American Republic, John Marshall shaped the Supreme Court as well as attitudes toward and understandings of the U.S. Constitution. John Marshall (September 24, 1755–July 6, 1835) was the fourth man to serve as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, following [...]
From the late 1660s until about 1763, slavery grew dramatically in the American colonies, but especially in the southern colonies. Then, between 1763 and 1793, the institution declined precipitously. Why? As an institution, slavery has one of the strangest of all histories. Though Africans were sold on American soil as early as 1619, chattel slavery [...]
One of the most frustrating things about the Civil War is simply trying to understand its many causes. As long as historians exist, there will be a multitudinous cacophony of answers to this perplexing question. I’ve been wrestling with these questions for nearly a quarter of a century. Let me offer several causes. I’ve had [...]
Edmund Burke believed that one must see the human being not for what he is, or the worst that is within him, but rather as clothed in the “wardrobe of moral imagination,” a glimpse of what the person could be and is, by God, meant to be. Though we correctly remember Edmund Burke as the [...]
I can think of few men of the twentieth century who thought more deeply about the nature and meaning and definition of conservatism than did Russell Kirk. We can accept, reject, or take in partial form what he said, but we’re fools if we don’t take him seriously, especially as we think about the present, [...]
In addition to his appearances before the British armed services and on the BBC, C.S. Lewis also gave a number of lay sermons during World War II. One of his most famous (among several that achieved real success) was one preached in December 1939 entitled “Learning in Wartime.” One witness, Erik Routley, remembered seeing the [...]
On November 29, 1954, C.S. Lewis offered his inaugural address at Cambridge, one of his finest writings or speeches in his professional career, “De Descriptione Temporum.”[1] In the speech, probably somewhat jarring to his listeners, Lewis claimed that one could divide the history of Europe into three periods: the pre-Christian; the Christian; and the post-Christian. [...]
Most of the Inklings had already gone through one world war, and when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, they knew that their children—especially J.R.R. Tolkien’s sons—would have to go through a second one. It was all quite depressing. In September 1939, war descended upon Europe as the National Socialists of Germany and the international [...]
In his own day, George Washington served as a pillar of Atlantis, recognized not only for his willingness to sacrifice his life for the great Republic, but also as the founder of the first serious Republic a weary world had witnessed in centuries. He deserves the title “the American Marcus Aurelius.” In his own day [...]