Various

Water from you will quickly fill my deserted soul, which withers, until it meets with my eyes and, reaching their rim, gives ocular proof of a tropic within. ”Patrick Lee Miller Optics Black is no color and all of them. White is all colors and none of them. So it’s simply a matter of . . . . Continue Reading »

Johann Sebastian Bach: the Learned Musician. By Christoph Wolff. Norton. 599 pp. $39.95 . Great books do not require long reviews. If the book’s so great, why waste time reading the review? That being so, this review of Christoph Wolff’s new biography of Johann Sebastian Bach is already . . . . Continue Reading »

Correspondence (November 2000) Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 107 (November 2000): 2-8. The Pope in Israel It wasn’t the fact that a pope visited Israel that made John Paul II’s visit to Israel so awe“inspiring”but that this Pope visited (George Weigel, “ Holy Land . . . . Continue Reading »

From fairest creatures we desire increase That being fat they may before they die Have such avoirdupois that at decease They’ll make a greater claim on memory” Dew“lapped, lids heavy, pouched eyes, Poly“chinned, their engine full of fuel And bellied to obscure the land that . . . . Continue Reading »

Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness. By Thomas Albert Howard. Cambridge University Press. 250 pp. $49.95. Jacob Burckhardt, the great Swiss-German historian of the Renaissance, son of . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 106 (October 2000): 2-14. How Intelligent Is Intelligent Design? Stephen C. Meyer’s article “DNA and Other Designs” (April) captures the heart of the scientific case against the materialist ideology that rules biology. Neither physical laws nor chance . . . . Continue Reading »

A part of us is always praying for those things the other parts don’t know that they need. At dusk, Eight Great Blue Herons pick their legs out of muck, Sixteen bony legs stroke the nerve of the sky, Huge Heron weight lumbering, carving smoothly into air. I watch them cross the channel toward . . . . Continue Reading »

All Things Censored by Mumia Abu-Jamal Seven Stories, 303 pp., $29.95 In one of those moments that remind us that there’s a culture war going on, National Public Radio decided in 1994 to hire Mumia Abu-Jamal”serving time for the 1982 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel . . . . Continue Reading »

Love and Sex I am disappointed in Gilbert Meilaender’s review of Eugene Rogers’ book Sexuality and the Christian Body ( “What Sex Is”And Is For,” April ). Rogers speaks of love and equates it with sex. But Professor Meilaender misses the point, and instead of denying the . . . . Continue Reading »

Journal of a Soul: The Autobiography of Pope John XXIII. Translated by Dorothy White. Image/Doubleday. 453 pp. $14.95 A new edition of John XXIII’s journals (originally printed in Italy in 1964 and in the United States in 1980) arrives just in time to help mediate the latest round in the . . . . Continue Reading »