Various

The Pilgrim’s Progress: a Morality in a Prologue, Four Acts and an Epilogue. Composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Performed by the Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus (Richard Hickox, conductor; Gerald Finley as the Pilgrim). 2 CD set: Chandos CHAN 9625. $32 .97. No sex. Little violence. . . . . Continue Reading »

Correspondence (November 1999) Of Law and Morality It is a profound service for Robert H. Bork in “Thomas More for Our Season” (June/July) to recognize a distinction between law and morality, and then retract that distinction out of fear of the disorder that would follow from . . . . Continue Reading »

Poetry Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 97 (November 1999): 14, 27, 33. Oriental for Robin, my daughter Last spring we planted a small Japanese maple. So meager and spindly, its few leaves curving over its pencil-thin stem like a derelict, half-open umbrella. We could only imagine this year’s . . . . Continue Reading »

The Catholic University as Promise and Project: Reflections in a Jesuit Idiom. By Michael J. Buckley, S.J. Georgetown University Press. 224 pp. $55 cloth, $22.95 paper. Michael Buckley, chronicler and critic of Western religious culture, ranks with fellow Jesuit Walter Ong, the esteemed interpreter . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 96 (October 1999): 2-10. To Bomb or Not to Bomb I hope I am not alone in my disappointment regarding Richard John Neuhaus’ analysis of the imbroglio in Yugoslavia (” The Clinton Era, At Home and Abroad,” Public Square, May ). The justifications . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 96 (October 1999): 24, 41, 55. Sometimes in Autumn An overcast day: gray clouds slide across the sky like platters on a table. The grasses lift up brown tassels from an undercoat of yellow; the grasses have stolen the sun’s yellow. The wind frisks cars as they . . . . Continue Reading »

Hitler 1889“1936: Hubris. By Ian Kershaw. Norton. 845 pp. $35 Adolf Hitler is arguably the most important political figure of the twentieth century. His significance rests entirely on what he destroyed or what was destroyed in his name. But who was he? Hitler’s background and family were . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 95 (August/September 1999): 2-10. Blindness on Birth Control? There is so much openhearted sincerity in James Nuechterlein’s “Catholics, Protestants, and Contraception” (April) that I feel moved to respond. He writes, following J. Budziszewski, that . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 95 (August/September 1999): 12, 20, 40, 48, 54. Glitter At peak of day it starts, Starlings chittering Like bits of broken glass. An autumnal chorale In the crown of sycamore, Whose trunk flakes white Beneath the frangible song, Whose yellowing leaves lap And lave . . . . Continue Reading »

U.S. Foreign Policy in the Twenty“First Century: The Relevance of Realism. By Robert J. Myers. Louisiana State University Press. 184 pp. $24 .95 Contemporary writing about America’s role in the world is too often marred by abstruse theorizing or, at the popular level, by . . . . Continue Reading »