My friend Matt Crawford has written a book ! It is a very good book! I will have more to say about it later! But for now, go read this warm review of Shop Class as Soulcraft , by Slate ‘s Michael Agger! . . . . Continue Reading »
The latest issue of Modern Age (Winter 2009) is now available for general consumption and features a symposium on Remi Bragues amazingly erudite book The Law of God . Besides a very fine lead contribution from Mark Shiffman (who blogs over at Front Porch Republic ) youll also find short . . . . Continue Reading »
At The University Bookman , Joseph P. Duggan offers an interesting read of Marshall McLuhan as a ‘postmodern grammarian.’ There’s too much at issue for me to cut into it adequately at the moment, but all manner of intriguing and controversial questions are raised in a pretty short . . . . Continue Reading »
As the Right broadly defined argues about its direction, let’s hope for an increasingly large place in that public sphere for Postmodern Conservatism. But what is it? My attempts to define can be found here in various parts. To continue, the embrace of uncertainty is an intersection of two . . . . Continue Reading »
There are two models of rapture — one super-worldly, one this-worldly, one in which we are abducted, from here to eternity, and one in which we are inducted, to infinity and beyond. The first model is depressing if it’s the only opportunity we have to experience eternity. Even the . . . . Continue Reading »
Jackson died this day, one hundred and forty-six years ago. He was thirty-nine years old, a kid for crying out loud, and to have accomplished all that he did! We can only wonder at what he would have done at Gettysburg. Surely he would have insisted that Stuart stay close to the army, that . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m not a musician in any real sense of the word, only an enthusiast. In good choirs I’ve sung in, my contributions have been limited to reasonably non-incompetent alto-line filler, for pieces like Mendelssohn’s Richte mich Gott. That’s one kind of good choir: the choir which . . . . Continue Reading »
Roger Scruton’s written a book on beauty, in case you hadn’t heard. Here’s a nice little review, which frames the beauty question evocatively enough in terms of beauty’s relation, or antagonism, to kitsch. And so I ask: if beauty is the promise of happiness, is the problem . . . . Continue Reading »
In the Emmy-winning 1997 version of Rebecca , there’s a scene in which the new, young Mrs. de Winter is harassed by one of the film’s less savory characters for claiming to enjoy being alone at the vast Manderlay estate while her husband is away on business. From our present-day . . . . Continue Reading »
A While We’re At It in this month’s edition of The Public Square, the popular column at the end of First Things:Intelligent and entertaining are two adjectives that go together far too rarely, but they belong in company when speaking of our contributing writer Alan Jacobs. He has in this . . . . Continue Reading »