John J. Reilly

Yes, it is possible to write a single-volume general history of art, if you narrow the definition and focus on your own enthusiasms. Paul Johnson is best known for his large-scale histories, written in the Burkean tradition of moralizing conservatism. He is also, however, a serious painter himself, . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert Kaplan has spent the past twenty years reporting on local collapses of civilization, chiefly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He tells us that, in the future, we should expect more collapse rather than less, and over a wider area. Indeed, he declares that “the . . . . Continue Reading »

This book is the third of the projected four in John Crowley’s major novelistic treatment of gnosticism and hermeticism. As in the two prior books, Aegypt (1987) and Love and Sleep (1994), Daemonomania is held together, rather loosely, through the character of Pierce Moffet, a young historian . . . . Continue Reading »

From Dawn to Decadence is one of those wonderful books that cannot be categorized. Some reviewers have compared it to The Education of Henry Adams , the great intellectual auto­ biography that seemed to sum up the last fin“de“siècle. The comparison does no injustice to either work. Jacques . . . . Continue Reading »

It is of course the case that only God knows what will happen in the next century and the next millennium. But we human beings are created with an irrepressible disposition toward the future, as well as a capacity to recall the past. In the last year we published a “millennium series” of . . . . Continue Reading »

TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information by erik davis. harmony. 368 pp. $25.Early on in this fascinating survey of the spiritual dimension of cyberculture, Erik Davis observes that “the spiritual imagination seizes information technology for its own purposes.” The . . . . Continue Reading »

This season’s most controversial new program, Nothing Sacred, is about everyday life at an urban Catholic parish. At any rate, it is about everyday life as refracted through the multi-layered narrative techniques used in ER and its progeny: handheld cameras, several subplots running at once, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection By Harold Bloom. Riverhead Books/Putman, 255 pages, $24.95. Harold Bloom, perhaps, needs no introduction. A professor at both Yale and New York University, he is as famous a literary critic as we have in America, and in recent . . . . Continue Reading »

I rarely have occasion to walk through Times Square in Manhattan, so I found myself somewhat taken aback by how much it had improved when I walked through there one morning last summer. It was still noisy and crowded, of course, but surprisingly clean, with many new facades. If any of the stores . . . . Continue Reading »

The ice is beginning to crack in another section of the cold, hard surface of modernity. The part of the frozen lake that is breaking up this time is Darwinism, or at least Darwinism as a worldview with implications for culture and social policy. And as with the breaking up of Marxism and . . . . Continue Reading »