March 1999
March Letters 154
The Contraception Debate Louis Dupré has suggested that the hallmark of modernity is the belief that things…
The Gods of Left and Right
The Public Square The Gods of Left and Right We are regularly cautioned against stereotypes, and…
The Ethics of Self-Sacrifice
If I were to say that the highest imaginable exemplification of the good consists in dying sacrificially…
Thomas Aquinas: A Doctor for the Ages
Why should a medieval Catholic priest merit a place among the most important figures of the second…
The Future of the End of Democracy
If you want to know why the United States is in a constitutional crisis, a good place…
The Parent Trap Times Three
When my daughter was seven, her Austrian grandmother sent her three Erich Kaestner novels for Christmas. Her…
The Mozart Effect
It can cure backache. And asthma. And obesity, writer’s block, alcoholism, schizophrenia, prejudice, heart disease, drug addiction,…
Preachers
It was only when I reached my twenties that I came fully to understand that the center…
Daddy’s Little Girl
What went wrong with Alice Walker’s new book, her first novel in six years? By the Light…
The Slowness of the Good
Patience: How We Wait Upon the World.By David Baily Harned.Cowley. 191 pp. $12.95 Over the past several…
A Sabbath Meal
Kaddish.By Leon Wieseltier.Knopf. 588 pp. $27.50. Probably the most important cultural phenomenon in contemporary Jewry is the…
Texts Have Consequences
Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture – New Testament II: Mark.Edited by Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A.…
Briefly Noted 154
The Prince of Egypt: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Compact Disc from Uni/DreamWorks Records. $17.97 The Prince of…
Joe Fletcher’s Clone
Who’s Afraid Of Human Cloning?By George Pence.Rowman & Littlefield. 181 pp. $45 cloth. $12.95 Gregory Pence’s Who’s…
The Sexual Counterrevolution
A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.By Wendy Shalit.Free Press. 304 pp. $24. Despite its modest…
A Populist Foreign Policy?
Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy.By Eric Alterman.Cornell Univeristy Press. 224 pp. $25.…
Poetry
Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 91 (March 1999): 9, 26, 32. Bedtime and Weekly Our toddler slices…