Since the official validation of Christianity in the fourth century, ecclesiastical leaders have built places of worship in central and highly visible locations. They were not motivated just by grandeur and power. In addition, they sensed that, to be authentic, Christian presence in the world must . . . . Continue Reading »
Not long before he died, the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin somberly summed up his, and our, age: “I have lived through most of the twentieth century without, I must add, suffering personal hardship. I remember it only as the most terrible century in Western history.” What made it so . . . . Continue Reading »
We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, . . . . Continue Reading »
Americans have always thought of their country as other and better than anyplace else. The most obvious measure of comparative superiority was with Europe, the place where, through most of the nation’s history, most people came from and against which they assessed their achievements. The protean . . . . Continue Reading »
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Manby william morrowharper perennial, 662 pages, $27.50 Seeking to create, in her new magnum opus, a canvas rivaling in scope those of Balzac and Dickens, Susan Faludi offered herself as compassionate auditor to American males over a six-year period. The . . . . Continue Reading »
It is of course the case that only God knows what will happen in the next century and the next millennium. But we human beings are created with an irrepressible disposition toward the future, as well as a capacity to recall the past. In the last year we published a “millennium series” of . . . . Continue Reading »
Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China by doug guthrie princeton university press, 302 pages, $39.95 In the famous account he gave of his twenty-four years away from his native Venice, Marco Polo was not above embellishment: the gold and silver said to line the walls of . . . . Continue Reading »
What to do about the female saints? Arriving at an acceptable consensus regarding the holy women of Christianity has been a persistent problem for feminist theologians. The first wave of the women’s movement tended to take a disparaging stance toward the nuns, lay spinsters, wives, mothers, . . . . Continue Reading »
Graham Greene was a great novelist of a special kind. Unlike many literary practitioners in this century, he did not experiment with language, subvert traditional narrative, or choose exotic subjects. He simply used the powerful imagination that led him to speak of his work as a “guided dream.” . . . . Continue Reading »
In Defense of Natural Lawby robert p. georgeclarendon/oxford university press, 343 pages, $65 In his influential book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins asserts that “Like successful Chicago gangsters our genes have survived . . . in a highly competitive world, . . . [and so] a predominant . . . . Continue Reading »
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