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Leonardo da Vinciby walter isaacsonsimon and schuster, 624 pages, $35 Walter Isaacson, best known for biographies of Steve Jobs and Einstein, is unsurprisingly most interested in Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific achievements. His chief concern in this volume is examining how Leonardo’s forays into . . . . Continue Reading »

PIO’S NO-NO? My Jewish children are proud Americans born and raised in New York. When they were young, they learned a game from older children that they played and taught to younger children. It is a form of tag in which the person who is “it” yells a catchphrase, and everyone on “base” . . . . Continue Reading »

Pieter Bruegelby larry silverabbeville, 464 pages, $150 Times were hard in the Low Countries during the life of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, perhaps especially for painters of religious art. The Reformation had called into question the place of art in sacred spaces, and the political and ecclesiastical . . . . Continue Reading »

EVANGELISM While I appreciated Robert Barron’s 2017 Erasmus Lecture, “Evangelizing the Nones” (January), the bishop overestimates the degree to which young “nones” take their cues from the New Atheism. As pernicious as that philosophy has proven to be, it is not the lodestar for young . . . . Continue Reading »

DEADLY DESERTS Paul Griffiths’s sneering review of our book, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed (“Against Capital Punishment,” December 2017), illustrates how much bile—and how little charity—is often to be found in those who speak the loudest of mercy and humanity. Griffiths suggests . . . . Continue Reading »

The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law edited by wilfried hartmann and kenneth pennington catholic university of america, 512 pages, $75 In this lively and detailed collection of articles concerning the development of judicial practice during the Middle Ages, the reader is . . . . Continue Reading »

PROTESTANT PARANOIA? R. R. Reno confirms Samuel Gregg’s suspicion that First Things is tempering its embrace of free markets (“Building Bridges, Not Walls,” November). Perhaps he can confirm—or deny—whether the journal is also rethinking its commitment to the free exercise of . . . . Continue Reading »

Bonds of Wool: The Pallium and Papal Power in the Middle Agesby steven a. schoenig, s.j.catholic university of america, 544 pages, $75 Each year on the Feast of St. Agnes, a curious ritual takes place in Rome: Two young lambs are brought to the Church of St. Agnes Outside the Walls, where they are . . . . Continue Reading »

CONTEMPT OF COURT James Nuechterlein (“Remembering Peter Berger,” October) feels that the 1996 First Things symposium on the judicial usurpation of politics was inappropriate because it cast doubts on the legitimacy of American political order. As it is, however, the problem is still with us. If . . . . Continue Reading »

BURNING BRIDGES I would like to thank First Things for the kind invitation to respond to Fr. Paul Mankowski’s review of my book Building a Bridge (“Pontifex Minimus,” August/September). Sadly, I found the review almost entirely divorced from the experience of the majority of LGBT Catholics in . . . . Continue Reading »