Just as the Second World War ended, the 1946 novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham became a bestseller. Perhaps more than any other, the noir genre fitted the mood of Post–war America. It...
So incisive and troubling did the Nazis find Jean Renoir’s indictment of war and his embrace of the shared culture of Europe, that when the Wehrmacht invaded France and occupied Paris in the spring of 1940, Renoir's film La Grande Illusion was among the first cultural artifacts Nazi officials confiscated...
The 39 Steps is one of five films that Alfred Hitchcock made in England about espionage in the mid-to-late 1930s. These films capture the growing threat felt in Britain from foreign powers. In their scenarios the nation's security was nowhere more threatened than by spies hiding in plain sight...
The Human Condition, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, is more than a mere movie. It is certainly not entertainment. It is an experience in which the viewer participates. It is not an easy movie to watch. The suffering Christ is encountered at every turn...
Though C.S. Lewis had certainly been a patriot in the First World War, he was determined to be a prophet in the Second. In his speeches and his writings, he spoke directly to a people roused by the heat of battle and war, when morality and norms...
Paul Kengor’s A Pope and a President is unusual in that it is also a theo-history, taking seriously the religious events of the 20th century. Written with academic rigor and in a brisk, readable style, it is a God’s-eye view of the hidden events of the 20th century and the...
Those soldiers gave my grandfather’s graveside service a gravity and dignity it would have lacked otherwise. They shared a bond with him that I can never understand, for I am a soldier’s grandson but not a soldier... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our...
Those of my Dutch neighbor's generation knew exactly what they were doing in the Passion Play that was Europe during World War II. It was her Christian faith that sustained her through the hardships of those years...
...
Though history has shown Catholics sometimes acting ignobly towards Jews, much more often Catholics have acted as protectors of them... Few episodes in recent Church history arouse as much attention as the alleged silence of Pope...
What a treat is it for a group of amateur string players, busy in their everyday lives, to spend a week in a far-off place and inundate themselves in practice and education concerning a single piece of...
Real Europeans see history as a battle: first, to organize human life in accordance with national and popular principles, with traditions and habits; and second, not to be ruled by even the most perfect ideas thought up by foreigners...
Because of the extraordinary valor shown by so many young men on that distant beach, America stood singular and tall in the saddle. It was her finest hour and for that at least we must be grateful...
Friedrich Hayek believed that the very institutions of liberalism and republicanism, when misused, can foster the totalitarianism of democracy... The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek (University of Chicago Press, 1944)
Professor...
To understand Winston Churchill’s policy of aid to Joseph Stalin, one must look back upon what it was that Britain and the free world faced prior to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union... Mr. Henry...
