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ECONOMISM Richard Spady’s article “Economics as Ideology” (April) has some excellent insights. Spady argues that economics functions as an ideology when it imposes its rigid anthropology—dominated by a simplistic, utility-maximizing mythology of the individual—on the material it . . . . Continue Reading »

Perseverance in the Parish?:  Religious Attitudes from a Black Catholic Perspective by darren w. davis and donald b. pope-davis cambridge, 198 pages, $99.99 Perseverance in the Parish? details the findings of the largest and most methodologically rigorous study of the three million . . . . Continue Reading »

ASSERTED, NOT ARGUED Robert Benne’s critique of Mitri Raheb’s lecture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (“Political Supersessionism,” March) is full of claims and insinuations, but bereft of substantial arguments. For example, Benne writes that “Raheb flatly denies that Israel has any . . . . Continue Reading »

Leonardo da Vinciby walter isaacsonsimon and schuster, 624 pages, $35 Walter Isaacson, best known for biographies of Steve Jobs and Einstein, is unsurprisingly most interested in Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific achievements. His chief concern in this volume is examining how Leonardo’s forays into . . . . Continue Reading »

PIO’S NO-NO? My Jewish children are proud Americans born and raised in New York. When they were young, they learned a game from older children that they played and taught to younger children. It is a form of tag in which the person who is “it” yells a catchphrase, and everyone on “base” . . . . Continue Reading »

Pieter Bruegelby larry silverabbeville, 464 pages, $150 Times were hard in the Low Countries during the life of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, perhaps especially for painters of religious art. The Reformation had called into question the place of art in sacred spaces, and the political and ecclesiastical . . . . Continue Reading »

EVANGELISM While I appreciated Robert Barron’s 2017 Erasmus Lecture, “Evangelizing the Nones” (January), the bishop overestimates the degree to which young “nones” take their cues from the New Atheism. As pernicious as that philosophy has proven to be, it is not the lodestar for young . . . . Continue Reading »

DEADLY DESERTS Paul Griffiths’s sneering review of our book, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed (“Against Capital Punishment,” December 2017), illustrates how much bile—and how little charity—is often to be found in those who speak the loudest of mercy and humanity. Griffiths suggests . . . . Continue Reading »

The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law edited by wilfried hartmann and kenneth pennington catholic university of america, 512 pages, $75 In this lively and detailed collection of articles concerning the development of judicial practice during the Middle Ages, the reader is . . . . Continue Reading »

PROTESTANT PARANOIA? R. R. Reno confirms Samuel Gregg’s suspicion that First Things is tempering its embrace of free markets (“Building Bridges, Not Walls,” November). Perhaps he can confirm—or deny—whether the journal is also rethinking its commitment to the free exercise of . . . . Continue Reading »