I belong to a book group, as it seems about 99% of American women do these days. The books are more or less a pretext for getting together, talking, eating, and talking (did I say talking?). Sometimes I read the … Continue reading →
[NOTE: In one of yesterday’s posts I reproduced some photos of people when young alongside the very same people considerably older. Then I offered—without any commentary—one of my favorite poems, “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” by Gerard Manley … Continue reading →
Sometimes I don’t like to confront the fact of aging. Sometimes it’s okay with me (not that anyone’s asking). These before and after photos—a person young, the same person older, in the very same pose and similar clothing—are heartbreaking, heartwarming, … Continue reading →
Here’s another of those perennial articles listing the blockbuster books that were initially rejected by publisher after publisher. I remember I used to own a book that was a collection of editors’ rejection letters for great classic and popular works. … Continue reading →
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.] I’m currently reading Francine Prose’s Anne Frank: the book, the life, the afterlife. It’s about the process by which Anne Frank wrote and then rewrote her diary, with an eye to … Continue reading →
For all you history buffs out there, and for anyone interested in the roots of progressivism in the United States (which would probably include most readers here), Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition by Bowdoin professor Jean Yarbrough sounds … Continue reading →
[Hat tip: Ace.] The liberal agenda continues apace, in ways that are especially chilling but not at all surprising. I’m referring to Sarah Conly’s new book entitled Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism, which purports to use social science research to … Continue reading →
I’ve never been all that keen on novels, except for those novels on which I’ve been very keen. The latter tend to be classics: Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Moby Dick, 1984, with a coupla Russian guys and some random others … Continue reading →
Try this for size (hat tip: Gerard Vanderleun at American Digest). The video includes a lot of new-agey political stuff, but it’s the pictures that are wonderful: OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo. Here’s an early post of mine on … Continue reading →
I’ve written before about Allan Bloom’s masterful The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, here and here. And I probably will again. It is so richly loaded with thought that almost every sentence might cause the reader to … Continue reading →
Amity Shlaes, author of the highly-praised (by conservatives, anyway) The Forgotten Man, about the Great Depression, has just put out a biography of Calvin Coolidge called—simply and appropriately enough, since he was known as a man who didn’t waste words—Coolidge. … Continue reading →
[NOTE: I thought this post, first published here in November of 2010, could bear repeating. I had forgotten the Jarrett quote with which it begins. But on looking at it again, it seems even more chilling than ever—and it was … Continue reading →