Mary Ann Glendon

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Augustine and the Limits of Politics By Jean Bethke Elshtain University of Notre Dame Press, 118 pages, $21.95 In this engaging series of meditations, Jean Bethke Elshtain makes a convincing case that Augustine of Hippo (354“430 a.d. ) is a saint for our times. Originally presented as a . . . . Continue Reading »

”Feminism is not the Story of My Life”: How Today’s Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of Women By Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Doubleday, 288 pages, $23.95 This timely and well-documented book addresses the puzzle of why nearly two-thirds of American women embrace many . . . . Continue Reading »

“You are going to Beijing to be witnesses,” the Holy See’s Undersecretary for Relations with States told us as we left for the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women last September”daunting words for our band of fourteen women and eight men from nine countries and five continents. In the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Neighborhood Life in the Chicago of the 1950s  By Alan Ehrenhalt  Basic Books, 299 pages, $23 You have to give Alan Ehrenhalt, the editor of Governing magazine, credit for a lot of nerve. It’s one thing to take on the job of . . . . Continue Reading »

In Good Hands:The Life of a Family FarmBy Charles FishFarrar, Straus & Giroux, 29 pages, $21 Sitting in the British Museum, amidst a great, grimy, bustling city, Karl Marx wrote that the bourgeoisie should be thanked for at least one accomplishment: rescuing a large part of the European population . . . . Continue Reading »

Chicago's financial district and the seat of its city government are only a few blocks apart, yet they belong to two different worlds. I learned this in my first few months of law practice in 1964 when, as low person on the totem pole, I had to handle routine motions in both state and federal . . . . Continue Reading »

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics by Jane Jacobs Random House, 236 pages, $22 In her latest book, Jane Jacobs trains her genial, sparkling intelligence on a subject that is much neglected in our law-saturated society: the great webs of manners, . . . . Continue Reading »

Religious litigants claimed victories in all four cases involving religious freedom to reach the Supreme Court this past term. Far from clear, however, is whether any of these hard-fought legal wins represents significant progress for citizens resisting the cultural forces bent on constricting the . . . . Continue Reading »

Awell-known account of creativity sets the scene for a celebrated act of creation, and a bleak scene it was: “In the beginning … the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the face of the abyss.” On that occasion, creativity consisted in bringing something out of . . . . Continue Reading »