Back to Our Future

by Robin Darling Young

When we read every day of the affairs of some medieval institution—the papacy, the British Parliament, the rabbinate, or the Deir ul-Islam—we are looking into the Middle . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Aug 1992

Church-State Conundrums

by Keith Pavlischek

In the field of church-state jurisprudence, as is well known, legal scholars are generally divided between “strict separationists” and “accommodationists.” The former place a “broad interpretation” on the First Amendment’s prohibition of establishment, insisting on an absolute . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 1992

New Age Mush

by Charlotte Allen

In 1975, Fritjof Capra, an Austrian émigré physicist and systems theorist, published The Tao of Physics, an effort to find parallels between scientific principles and the insights of Eastern spirituality. He later became a guru in his own right, specializing in ecology, in Berkeley, . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 1992

Character and Poverty

by Jerry Z. Muller

Gertrude Himmelfarb’s The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age, published in 1984, examined the debate on poverty in British thought from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations of 1776 through the mid-nineteenth century. The book was remarkable for its scope. It followed . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 1992

The Blackboard Bungle

by Charles L. Glenn

In her lively new study based upon fourteen schools of education across the country, Rita Kramer skewers two quite distinct forms of folly.   One form of folly is the attempt by a few of the faculty whose classes she observed to make the classes occasions for political indoctrination so . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 1992

The Education Reform Dodge

by Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Will the flood of education books ever subside? Since 1983, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education declared us a “nation at risk,” there’s been a deluge. Wags have noted that we are menaced by a rising tide of education reports. Most fall into familiar categories. These . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 1992

The American Battlefield

by Jean Bethke Elshtain

On first reading of Culture Wars, James Hunter’s study of America’s social divisions, I was greatly impressed. On reading it again, I am still impressed, but there are points at which I wanted Hunter to go a bit further, to push home his central theme with a bit more fervor, and to . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 1992

The One and the Many

by Gilbert Meilaender

The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideasby Isaiah BerlinAlfred A. Knopf, 277 pages, $22 Henry Hardy, the editor of this hook, describes it as “in effect the fifth of four volumes” of Isaiah Berlin’s collected essays. Like one of its predecessor volumes (Against the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 1991

Briefly Noted

by Various

On the Third Dayby Piers Paul ReadRandom House, 259 pages, $20 You can’t fault novelist Piers Paul Read for raising some intriguing questions around a fascinating pair of archeological conceits: What would happen if a skeleton bearing the marks of torture and crucifixion associated with . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 1991

The Personal Niebuhr

by William J. Weston

Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold and Ursula NiebuhrEdited by Ursula M. NiebuhrHarperCollins, 432 pages, $29.95 In a perverse way, we have Richard W. Fox to thank for this most interesting volume of letters of the late Reinhold Niebuhr and illustrious correspondents. . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 1991