Various

The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture by Gary Saul Morson Yale, 352 pages, $30 Perhaps it was as a diversion from writing books on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky that the author, a professor of Slavic languages at Northwestern, decided to write on the shortest of literary genres, the quotation. . . . . Continue Reading »

Disorder & Diseased As Stanton Jones shows (“Same-Sex Science,” February), the position that “gay is good” is a philosophical, not scientific, conclusion, and so must be argued on philosophical grounds. However, he makes a mistake in framing the question of the psychological . . . . Continue Reading »

Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet ?by Donald Weinstein ?Yale, 400 pages, $38 No prophet is born in a vacuum. That is one of the many offered learned in Donald Weinstein’s excellent new book, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet . Weinstein, a professor . . . . Continue Reading »

• Being a Theodish heathen, and indeed the “First Atheling” (prince, in case you didn’t know) of a tribe called New Normandy”he even has “thralls””New York Republican city councilman Dan Halloran “could be the first elected official in the United . . . . Continue Reading »

developing status Christopher Kaczor (“Equal Rights, Unequal Wrongs,” August/September) echoes a fallacious argument now popular among pro-life advocates. If human development affected moral status, the story goes, then killing an adult would be worse than killing a teenager, which in . . . . Continue Reading »

Anything Goes ?by Theodore Dalrymple New English Review Press, 218 pages, $19.95 In much learning there is weariness of flesh . . . or, in the case of Theodore Dalrymple, stoical wit. A former prison doctor and hospital psychiatrist in London, presently a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, his wide . . . . Continue Reading »

Urban Orders Jane Jacobs was a historian of sorts, demanding that municipal officials not only consider, but celebrate, a community’s unique history in their planning and architectural decisions. When they don’t, as Wilfred McClay notes in his balanced essay on her The Death and Life of . . . . Continue Reading »

• The late Avery Dulles was a great friend of the magazine and of our founder, frequently contributing very significant articles to the magazine. His admirers and readers will be glad to know about The Legacy of Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. , recently published by Fordham University Press, and . . . . Continue Reading »

• A few nights ago two of our junior fellows, Matt and Mark, were riding the subway going to visit the third junior fellow, Alex, who lives uptown. As they were heading north on the 1 train, Mark reports, “A middle-aged, normal-looking woman began preaching fire and brimstone in the . . . . Continue Reading »

A Point in Time: The Search for Redemption in this Life and the Next ? by David Horowitz?, Regnery, 126 pages, $24.95 Famous for his conversion from 1960s radicalism to conservatism, David Horowitz’s simple yet startling new book, A Point in Time , is a lyrical and touching meditation on a . . . . Continue Reading »