Toward the end of this collection of essays, Professor Iván Völgyes gently chastises his brethren in the history and political science confraternities for the fact that “all too frequently … many of us in our profession … made compromises with the Communist regimes” of the old . . . . Continue Reading »
“Ihave always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.” So said celebrated astronomer and atheist Fred . . . . Continue Reading »
Byzantium: The Apogee by John Julius Norwich Knopf, 389 pages, $30 John Julius Norwich is a good storyteller and Byzantine history is filled with lively tales of palace intrigue, nepotism, treachery, assassinations, arranged marriages, perfidious ambassadors, ambitious generals, sieges of . . . . Continue Reading »
Protestant evangelicalism, it seems, has a symbiotic relationship with American denominationalism. Evangelicals trace their deepest roots to the Protestant Reformation, which was, among other things, a church split. In America, experiential revivalism and disestablishment have combined to liquidate . . . . Continue Reading »
Look out: here comes Susan Faludi leading the Charge of the Lightweight Brigade! Her thesis is simplicity itself. Just in case the reader might not get it straight off, it is repeated in each and every chapter title—all fourteen of them. There is and has been a terrible backlash in this land . . . . Continue Reading »
Roger Rosenblatt wants you to know that he has solved the abortion problem. Really. He’s written a whole book about it called Life Itself. Of course, the middle third of the book is just a summary of other people’s research on the history of abortion from the beginning of time, and . . . . Continue Reading »
Ron Hanen’s Mariette in Ecstasy is a haunting, enigmatic novel that is almost impossible to categorize, and it represents a radical departure from Hansen’s previous work. His first two novels, Desperadoes and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert . . . . Continue Reading »
Iam a Catholic, but I married Protestant. My husband has steeped me in Protestant lore: Protestants get results. Protestants think ahead. Protestants save (Catholics spend). My Protestant in-laws had to endure our Catholic wedding, their faces rigid with polite distress as they took in the crucifix . . . . Continue Reading »
Stanley Hauerwas once told me that After Christendom? might be the systematic assembly of his thought for which friends and opponents have pressed him. In considerable part, the promise is fulfilled. The chapters of this book were drafted for a single set of lectures and work together in a . . . . Continue Reading »
By any reckoning, Tom and Geri Suma should be Democrats. Both come from Democratic families. Like many of his and his wife’s forebears, Tom started out on the line for Chrysler. Geri voted for Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 primaries. And they still keep a bust of JFK in the living . . . . Continue Reading »
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