Joseph Bottum

He was the greatest reader I ever met. The greatest reader, and a cigar smoker, and a walker, and a preacher, and a brewer of some of the worst coffee ever made. What odd items the mind latches onto in moments of grief: the tilt of a friend’s head, the way he used his hands when he spoke, an . . . . Continue Reading »

Fr. George Rutler’s 1995 book Crisis of Saints has just been republished , which is a good thing. Missing from the new edition, however, seems to be the chapter “Newman and Land O’Lakes,” about the condition of Catholic education. As we contemplate the self-satisfied . . . . Continue Reading »

The April issue of First Things is now on sale¯a set of tributes and memorials that mark the death of the magazine’s founder, Richard John Neuhaus. Among the many fine pieces is Fr. Neuhaus’ unpublished essay, ” The One True Church ,” together with reviews of Fr. . . . . Continue Reading »

A last-minute addition to my travels near Boston: I mentioned last week that I’ll be giving a poetry reading on Saturday, March 14, at 3:00 p.m. at Jabberwocky Bookshop , 50 Water Street, Newburyport, Massachusetts. Some Readers of First Things in Wellesley saw the announcement and asked if I . . . . Continue Reading »

There’s a new fund, established at Notre Dame, under the Center for Ethics and Culture, called “The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life.” It’s a little hard to find through the man pages of the Notre Dame website—and why, exactly, is that? why isn’t the school . . . . Continue Reading »

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer translated by Burton Raffel Modern Library, 672 pages, $36 Chaucer is bawdy, and Chaucer is religious”somehow both merciless and merciful, cruel and gentle, practical and absurd, slapstick and ­profound. You can find in The Canterbury Tales the . . . . Continue Reading »

The political scientist Francis Canavan died on Thursday , February 26, at the age of ninety-one—yet another of the great good ones lost to us in recent months. Among his works for First Things were: ” The Popes and the Economy ” in 1991, ” Letting Go How We Die ” in . . . . Continue Reading »

For our friends north of Boston, I’ll be giving a poetry reading on Saturday, March 14, at 3:00 p.m. at: Jabberwocky Bookshop 50 Water Street Newburyport, Massachusetts Put together by our friends among the Powow River Poets—Rhina Espaillat, A.M. Juster, Michael Cantor, Len Krisak, and . . . . Continue Reading »

So it turns out that that Itzhak Perlman, Gabriela Montero, and Yo-Yo Ma were faking it at their Inaugural performance , playing along with a pre-recorded soundtrack instead of toughing it out in the cold. Yo-Yo Ma as the new Milli Vanilli. In the future, everyone will be lip-sync’ed for 15 . . . . Continue Reading »

Hundreds of books have been written in an attempt to explain American exceptionalism, as Richard John Neuhaus notes in a major essay called “ Secularizations ” in the February issue of First Things . In recent years, however, the table has been turned, and the question of increasingly . . . . Continue Reading »