Jeffrey A. Smith

A familiar charge by critics of today’s Church is the accusation that John Paul II and Benedict XVI have reacted against or “betrayed” the balance Vatican II struck between individual liberty and Christian tradition. A counter-revolution is even said to be afoot, with not only theological progressivism as its target but, even more darkly, democracy, liberty, and modernity… . Continue Reading »

The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death by john gray farrar, straus and giroux, 288 pages, $24 Few historians of culture would think to suggest a similarity between the death throes of Victorian England and the first decades of Soviet totalitarianism—but . . . . Continue Reading »

The Romantic Revolution: A History by tim blanning modern library, 272 pages, $22 The very aim that united the romantics—to express feeling—makes it impossible to define romanticism precisely. The romantic rejection of the classical ideal of mimesis as an aesthetic norm freed art from . . . . Continue Reading »