Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Lifeby philippe girardbasic books, 352 pages, $29.99The Virginia planter and Fire-Eater Edmund Ruffin, who in 1865 blew his brains out rather than live under Yankee rule, called Toussaint Louverture “the only truly great man yet known of the negro race.” In . . . . Continue Reading »
Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runcimanby minoo dinshawallen lane, 784 pages, £30 No events in medieval European history are more discussed today than the wars fought under the banner of the Cross of Christ known to us, but not to those who fought them, as the Crusades. Originally . . . . Continue Reading »
Why are so many inclined to sentimentalize the Russian Revolution, one of the most murderous chapters in human history? Continue Reading »
Protestantism was the first religious movement to take full advantage of the new powers of the press. Continue Reading »
John C. Calhoun, in being removed, was awarded an odd sort of honor: His ideas were treated as relevant and dangerous. Continue Reading »
Kennedy at his inauguration and medieval theologians agree: humans owe their existence to something beyond themselves, and they should live in light of that debt. Continue Reading »
For most of his career, Starr viewed the California experiment benevolently, as a phenomenon balanced between utopia and reason. But he was an intense Catholic believer who seems finally to have despaired of California’s grandiloquent and heartbreaking destiny. Continue Reading »
Everyone has a right to their opinion about the state of Catholicism in 2017, but no one has a right to invent their own Church history. Continue Reading »
Atheists have long been a vocal minority in America, their relations with the dominant Protestant culture defined by consistent, unresolved antagonism, unexpected ideological affinities and interdependencies, and the back-and-forth movement of individuals between atheism and belief. Continue Reading »
Istanbul is a history of the people who lived in and around the city walls. Madden’s narrative is driven by conquests and construction. It is punctuated by earthquakes, fires, and plagues, and shot through with religious fervor and political intrigue. Continue Reading »
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