I have long been captivated by the ongoing debates around Darwinian evolution, and two books I read this spring have validated some of my previously held views as well as opened new areas of thought for me. Mind and Cosmos, by Thomas Nagel, is a relatively brief book that explores the deficiencies in the […]

The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, by James Hannam We’ve been led to think of the Middle Ages as a period of “darkness”, intellectual stagnation, superstition, and ignorance.  Forget it.  This is utter myth primarily fabricated by the so-called Renaissance Scholars in what in many cases was a […]

The Founders’ Key, by Larry P. Arnn A short book by the President of Hillsdale College, who does a good job of describing why we are mistaken to educate our students to separate the Declaration of Independence from the U. S. Constitution in their foundation of and application to the American experiment.  To Arnn, the […]

I often at least scan E. J. Dionne’s syndicated newspaper essays because, although I don’t often agree with him, I do respect his insight and intellectual honesty.  There really are intellectually honest leftists out there!  His recent book, Our Divided Political Heart, was true to form–I greatly enjoyed his insight and analysis on our deeply […]

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 has always been somewhat a mystery to me, very often misunderstood,  more often mischaracterized, and the players and factions were very confusing.  It was, of course, a precursor to the main event, World War II, with Germany and the Soviet Union using it as a proxy for their respective […]

A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living, by Luc Ferry. This is one of the most fascinating books I have read.  Most of the ground he covers is of the major historical philosophical ideas I have studied in any number of previous presentations, but this was different.  Luc, who is a philosopher […]

Wilson was a favorite essayist and political and social scientist, and his book, The Moral Sense, was an important one for me.  In it, he identifies our moral sense, what some have described as “written on the heart”, as a fact of human nature, the primary enemy of moral relativism,  and an essence that statist […]

Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism, by Charles Hill This book is part of a Hoover Institution project styled the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order, the purpose of which is “a deeper understanding of the struggle in Islam between Muslims keen to protect the rule […]

*All Things Shining, by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly The subtitle to this book is Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, which pretty well describes the book.  The authors use some of the greatest works of the West to reveal how we have lost our engagement with and responsiveness […]

For the Soul of France, by Frederick Brown The subtitle of this book is Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus, and it is a fascinating history of the wrenching issues that roiled France in the period between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the beginning of World War I.  This period bordered on civil […]