I know it is a fact, but it is nonetheless hard to picture: Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would now be seventy-three years old. Everybody of a certain age has memories, if only of television images; many were there when he spoke, others marched with him in Selma or Montgomery, and some of . . . . Continue Reading »
The Public Square Students of the political philosopher Leo Strauss are fond of quoting the master to the effect that the American polity is built on foundations that are low but solid. When the discussion turns to the constituting ideas undergirding our political institutions, and the ideas that . . . . Continue Reading »
With the death of Sydney Ahlstrom and the retirements of Robert Handy and Martin Marty from the classroom, Mark Noll has surely become our leading teacher-historian of American Christianity. George Marsden may be his superior in charting the history of American fundamentalism and the Christian . . . . Continue Reading »
My worn and heavily marked copy of the original hardback edition of Peter Brown’s biography of St. Augustine, its binding held together by sturdy book tape, sits on a bookshelf close to my desk as it has since it first appeared in 1967. On the inside cover I have a little note, “Reviewed in . . . . Continue Reading »
The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascismby george l. mossehoward fertig. 230 pp. $35. Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state.” So Benito Mussolini trumpeted the ideal of fascism, the wild-eyed political movement that he rode to power in Italy . . . . Continue Reading »
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Loveby dava sobelwalker and company, 432 pages, $27 The first two terms of Dava Sobel’s subtitle—science and faith—inevitably suggest conflicts to us moderns. Yet, for the preeminent scientists of the seventeenth . . . . Continue Reading »
Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peaceby thomas l. pangle and peter j. ahrensdorfuniversity press of kansas, 362 pages, $45 Makers of American foreign policy today are experiencing a philosophical dearth, a want of broad principles of governmental conduct in world affairs. This . . . . Continue Reading »
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repressionby stéphane courtois, nicolas werth, jean-louis panné, andrzej paczkowski, karel bartosek, and jean-louis margolinharvard university press, 856 pages, $37.50 Publication of The Black Book of Communism in November 1997 in France stirred up a . . . . Continue Reading »
Since the official validation of Christianity in the fourth century, ecclesiastical leaders have built places of worship in central and highly visible locations. They were not motivated just by grandeur and power. In addition, they sensed that, to be authentic, Christian presence in the world must . . . . Continue Reading »
Not long before he died, the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin somberly summed up his, and our, age: “I have lived through most of the twentieth century without, I must add, suffering personal hardship. I remember it only as the most terrible century in Western history.” What made it so . . . . Continue Reading »
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