Various

Executing Justice Joseph Bottum’s prudential claim (“Christians and the Death Penalty,” August/September) that Christians must deny secular democracies the right to enact stories of high justice is challenging and attractive. After all, who wants to grant civil authorities who cannot bring . . . . Continue Reading »

Wicca’s Charm: Understanding the Spriritual Hunger Behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality. By Catherine Edwards Sanders. Shaw. 256 pp. $13.99 paper. Catherine Edwards Sanders argues that modern women turn to witchcraft and Goddess-worship because they find Christianity . . . . Continue Reading »

Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations. By Abraham Joshua Heschel, edited and translated by Gordon Tucker with Leonard Levin. Continuum. 848 pp. $95. One of the most delightful effects of Vatican II, with its decidedly positive appreciation of Judaism, has been the publication of . . . . Continue Reading »

Fusion or Confusion? Joseph Bottum’s intelligent and clever essay on “The New Fusionism” (June/July) offers a possible hypothesis, but as the last surviving Protestant Democrat on the editorial boards of FIRST THINGS, I am bound to see things a little differently. I cannot accept . . . . Continue Reading »

Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature. By Nicholas Boyle. University of Notre Dame Press. 304 pp. $55. In Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature , the Cambridge literary scholar Nicholas Boyle hopes to find “some new ways in which some of . . . . Continue Reading »

An Actual Buddhist Peter J. Leithart does not know what he is talking about in his article “When East Is West” (April). Your printing of his work is a disservice to readers who might actually wish to know something about American Buddhism. Leithart has clearly not visited an American . . . . Continue Reading »

Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews. By Mark Mazower. Knopf. 528 pp. $35. In 1430, Sultan Murad II conquered Thessalonica, the second city of Byzantium, for the Ottomans. His successors welcomed Jews expelled by Spain in 1492, and for the next four-and-a-half centuries three . . . . Continue Reading »

More on War Paul J. Griffith’s analogy of the “just war” with the procedure for licensing drivers confuses agents and their actions (see “Who Wants War? An Exchange,” April). Licensing implies that the state has a “presumption against drivers” (agents), not a . . . . Continue Reading »

Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World. By Wesley J. Smith. Encounter. 219 pp. $25.95. The Brave New World referred to is that of biotechnology. Specifically, Smith is concerned with the “power of biotechnology to affect the human future by harnessing our bodies at the cellular . . . . Continue Reading »

The Science of the Mind It was good to read Paul C. Vitz’s article about “psychology in recovery” (March 2005). Important things are going on today in psychology, and the positive psychology movement is a breath of fresh air. I do take exception, however, to a few of Dr. Vitz’s . . . . Continue Reading »