The publishing world, it seems, is just as prone to the fickleness of trends and fashions as is, well, the fashion industry. A few years ago, a whole spate of books came out on Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, most of them flogging (surely not by coincidence) the same dead horse of papal perfidy. . . . . Continue Reading »
I don’t have the computer skills, let alone the patience, to set up my own blogsite. So I am especially grateful to the editors of First Things for their ecumenical hospitality in opening their cyber-pages to voices other than their own during this month of August. In my first foray into this . . . . Continue Reading »
An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in RomaniaBy Marta Petreu Ivan R. Dee. 332 pages, $30It is an unenviable task for a biographer to dig up the dirt in someone’s life, and it is worth the effort only if the achievements of the person whose biography he has embarked on . . . . Continue Reading »
Of Time and the River I love the way the river rollicks here, and how it sluices headlong down the hill to hurtle through these spruces in a thrill of spray. Up-slope, beneath the glacier’s sheer façade, this melt of snow that fell the year the earth was made emerges as a rill; then, far . . . . Continue Reading »
It is a truth seldom acknowledged that the most delightful art is also the most didactic. Jane Austen comes readily to mind, as does the best of children’s literature. Supposed counterexamples only prove the rule. Oscar Wilde is celebrated for his dictum that “bad art is always sincere,” but . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
