Various

It is invariably a pleasure for an author when his book lands in the lap of a reviewer whose knowledge of the subject is as acute as that shown by Helen Andrews, who reviews my book on António Salazar in the ­February issue (“Benevolent Autocrat”). She observes that Salazar continues to divide . . . . Continue Reading »

All attempts to fit Thomas Becket into a mold that echoes the interests or prejudices of the writer fail to do justice to the man or to the complexities of his situation. Once he was appointed archbishop of ­Canterbury, for good or ill, it was his responsibility to protect the interests of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Pepperdine professor Paul J. Contino is a well-known and well-regarded scholar and teacher of Christianity and literature, and he proves himself an engaging and insightful guide to The Brothers Karamazov with this new study. “I began work on this book over thirty years ago,” he notes. . . . . Continue Reading »

One of the most fascinating details of Mary Eberstadt’s “The Fury of the Fatherless” (December) is the observation that the BLM movement has a Marxist vision of the family: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families . . . . Continue Reading »

In the late sixth century, the monk John Moschos called the Judean Desert a “spiritual meadow,” one blossoming with men and women seeking God alone. Fourteen centuries later, William Dalrymple retraced Moschos’s footsteps in From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the . . . . Continue Reading »

We asked some of our writers to contribute a paragraph about the most memorable movies and TV shows they saw this year. Continue Reading »

We asked some of our writers to contribute a paragraph about the most memorable books they read this year. Continue Reading »

I appreciated Sohrab Ahmari’s generous review of my book Live Not by Lies (“Resist in Truth,” November), and I credit his observation that what I deem “authentic liberalism”—­tolerant and pluralistic—is difficult to sustain. But it’s hard to see any realistic . . . . Continue Reading »

This handsomely produced book represents both the riches and the absurdities of the academic world circa 2020. Anyone who is, as I am, besotted with books to a degree some judge unhealthy will want to have a copy at hand, along with Roger S. Bagnall’s Early Christian Books in Egypt, Richard . . . . Continue Reading »

Catesby Leigh notes in his essay “Monumental Contrast” (October) that the removal of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial in New York City is a sign that the “monumental aesthetic” in public art is an “endangered species.” Those of us in the art world know only too well that in civic art the . . . . Continue Reading »