Uncategorized
Early Ethnography
Brian Pennington’s Was Hinduism Invented? includes a brief outline of William Ward’s 1817 treatise on the History, Literature and…
Shakespeare’s Trials
David Wootton’s TLS review of Quentin Skinner’s Forensic Shakespeare is a primer on Elizabethan law and legal rhetoric.…
History of Disgust
Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process traces modern standards of disgust and cleanliness to the development of court society…
What We’ve Been Reading
Mark Bauerlein I hadn’t read The Rise of Silas Lapham since graduate school, and I always remembered it…
Marilynne Robinson and the Conversion to Literacy
When I was a child,” Marilynne Robinson began an early essay, “I read books.” Lila Ames, the…
First Links — 12.12.14
Lila: A Dissenting View Linda Moore, Books & Culture Oxford Dictionaries Adds ‘Duck Face,’ ‘Man Crush,’ and…
Islamic Revolutionaries
In his brilliant Earthly Powers (3), Michael Burleigh cites a passage from Tocqueville’s book on the French Revolution.…
Sacrificial Politics
Semyon Frank was a Russian emigre to London. Michael Burleigh (Sacred Causes, 39) sums up his life:…
Un-Secular Age
Our secular age can be sustained only if the secular has been carefully distinguished from the sacred,…
Pure Aesthetics
Hugh Grady opens his Shakespeare and Impure Aesthetics (6-10) with a brief and illuminating discussion of Kant’s aesthetics…
University of St. Thomas and NARAL
Yesterday I drew attention to the unfortunate fact that the Biology Department at the University of St.…
Christmas Wars in France
I used to think the Christmas Wars were strictly an American thing, like corn dogs and attorneys’…
First Links — 12.11.14
Militants Destroy Iraqi Convent Sam Hardy, Hyperallergic The Purest of Lines: Isao Takahata’s Final Bow Michael Toscano,…
After the Temple
Jonathan Klawans is a great one for cutting through nonsense. In his Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, he…
The Weapons of Our Warfare
In The Empty Men, his study of the heroic theme in the Bible, Gregory Mobley catalogs some of…
