Category: REVIEW

New Life from Old Books

One of Hazony’s aims is to remind us that liberals and conservatives, while they teamed up against Communism to win the Cold War, do not share a political project. “Enlightenment liberalism,” Hazony argues, “is bereft of any interest in conserving anything. It is devoted entirely to freedom, and in particular to freedom from the past.”

A Heroic Song of Heroic Songs of Heroes

Rarely, if ever, does Christopher Ricks raise a point without matching it with some apt snippet of verse. Or, rather, rarely does Ricks raise a point at all; instead he discovers, within the verses of poets, the point he himself would like to raise and consider, so that reading a Ricks essay can become a game of hide-and-seek as the critic dodges and peeks from between the curtains of carefully selected verse.

Confessions of an Epidemiologist

We witnessed a prolonged curtailment of freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. But Mark Woolhouse does not address this. In fact, while he clearly comes out as lockdown sceptical, it is not entirely clear why.

The Magic of Old

The novel treats Britain’s past with the utmost respect it deserves; the regency world is presented to the reader in all its glory. Susanna Clarke does not betray its spirit by infusing it with modern culture, unlike so many other representations of the period.

Forgotten in the Promised Land

Oriental Jews may well have been discriminated against throughout Israel’s early decades, but Michale Boganim’s latest documentary vastly exaggerates their current plight.

A New Year for Russian Modernism

A New Year for Russian Modernism

Interested readers should know that, in what is billed as “the return of one of the greatest pianists of our time” spanning from Beethoven’s “Appassionata” and Chopin’s “Third Sonata,” Yefim Bronfman will perform a piano recital at the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni in Bologna on February 28, 2022.

February 22, 2022
Of Conquerors and Conquered

Of Conquerors and Conquered

This new book by a senior lecturer at the University of St. Andrews is a bracing, short but expansive, study of poetic expressions of the fall of two fabled civilizations.

February 22, 2022
Activism as Satire

Activism as Satire

Political satire is at its best when it transcends the limitations of partisan thinking. “Don’t Look Up” fails to do this.

February 20, 2022
“Let’s go through the present as through the desert”

“Let’s go through the present as through the desert”

From the desert of modernity, there is a path, and that is the path of tradition and return—as in the soul’s return to God.

February 19, 2022
A Sentimental Ode to Adolescence

A Sentimental Ode to Adolescence

If de Beauvoir’s elders can be accused of mistaking repression for virtue, then she and her intellectual peers were blind to the fact that over-indulgence is not freedom, but, instead, ranks among the most irresponsible forms of neglect.

February 18, 2022
Refusing to ‘Celebrate Diversity’:<br>A Christian Case for Religious Freedom for All

Refusing to ‘Celebrate Diversity’:<br>A Christian Case for Religious Freedom for All

The phony ‘tolerance of relativism’ must inexorably and unavoidably translate in practice into what it really is: the most implacable, ferocious intolerance.

February 14, 2022
FORGOTTEN CLASSICS: <br>Virtue in Jane Austen’s <em>Mansfield Park</em>

FORGOTTEN CLASSICS: <br>Virtue in Jane Austen’s <em>Mansfield Park</em>

The novel is compelling (even spellbinding at times)—and if it is called antiquated, it is only because we have forgotten that the oldest human battle is the worthiest one: the battle to achieve and maintain virtue in a fallen world.

January 31, 2022
History Un-Whigged

History Un-Whigged

Roberts does not refrain from criticising George, both for his political missteps and for his tendency to be slow in acknowledging them. But overall, Roberts has painted a masterful portrait of a patriotic, diligent and cultivated monarch who was periodically struck down by mental illness, worst of all during the tragic last decade of his life.

January 26, 2022
A Frenchman’s Passion for Seville

A Frenchman’s Passion for Seville

Ostensibly about bullfighting, it is actually the greatest book published by a foreigner about the city of Seville and one of the great books on Spain.

January 24, 2022
The Return Home

The Return Home

One might argue that conservatives and traditionalists have no choice but to use peaceful and legal means to advocate a return to traditional values, for the left is in a very totalitarian mood.

January 23, 2022
Can Platonism Save Us?

Can Platonism Save Us?

Without the Idea of the Good, Lloyd P. Gerson argues, a person cannot argue coherently against materialism, relativism, skepticism, mechanism, and nominalism.

January 16, 2022
Memorializing Mozart: “Mozart’s Final Year” at the Palm Beach Symphony

Memorializing Mozart: “Mozart’s Final Year” at the Palm Beach Symphony

As one of the first arts companies to return to live performance as the pandemic subsided, the Palm Beach Symphony has rocketed to national importance and richly deserves international notice.

January 15, 2022