Allen C. Guelzo

Abraham Lincoln loved to tell stories. But many of them, as one political acquaintance tactfully admitted, “would not do exactly for the drawing room.” Lincoln had been raised in what he once called “the back side of this world,” and he had learned many a tale of how backsides worked. One of . . . . Continue Reading »

If William Tecumseh Sherman is known for one thing, it is the scorching of Atlanta in November 1864 as he and his army set off on their March to the Sea. Like so much else that is associated with Sherman, the popular image of ruined Atlanta is an exaggeration. (About 70 percent of the city’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Everyone on that hot, dusty August afternoon in 1858 in the square at Ottawa, Illinois, knew who one of the men on the platform was. That man was Stephen ­Arnold ­Douglas, the senior U.S. senator from Illinois whose seat was up for ­re-election that year. Although Douglas stood only . . . . Continue Reading »

Toscanini:  Musician of Conscience  by harvey sachs liveright, 944 pages, $39.95 When the first instruction manual for leaders of orchestras—Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister—appeared in 1739, it was a sign that the size of orchestral ensembles and the . . . . Continue Reading »

I love my country – I fear my government. I first saw that mantra as a bumper sticker in the Clinton nineties. It then began to sprout as billboards and rock-paintings in the Obama years, and it has now become the chorus to almost every song of complaint composed by American conservatives. It is . . . . Continue Reading »

Just seventy years ago, a Fortune poll reported that 62 percent of Americans listened to classical music, 40 percent could identify Arturo Toscanini as an orchestral conductor, and nine million listeners (11 percent of American households) tuned in to weekly Metropolitan Opera broadcasts from New . . . . Continue Reading »

No American philosophy has as yet been produced,” complained Charles Sanders Peirce in 1866. “Since our country has become independent, Germany has produced the whole development of the Transcendental Philosophy, Scotland the whole philosophy of Common Sense, France the Eclectic Philosophy and . . . . Continue Reading »

An excerpt from The Hope of the Family, a booklength interview with Gerhard Cardinal Müller, forthcoming from Ignatius Press. Continue Reading »

“Justice and fairness” has become something of a mantra ever since presidential candidate Barack Obama told Joe the plumber that his hope was to “spread the wealth around” so that the economy is “good for everybody.” The plumber, Samuel Wurzelbacher, was less than thrilled by the implications of spreading the wealth… . Continue Reading »

Say the word prudence to the ancients, and you would have named a virtue. Say it to the faculties of American colleges in the nineteenth century, and you would have described part of the philosophy curriculum. Say it today, and you’ve made a joke. Through much of American history, prudence was . . . . Continue Reading »