books
The Thought-Provoking “Love in the Western World’ by Denis de Rougement

First written in 1938 and revised and enlarged in 1954, Love in the Western World is ...

literature-2
Throwback Thursday — “Children of Chaucer, Subjects of Shakespeare, Heirs of Milton”

Nowadays there is a growing consensus that the great American Melting Pot has had a hole b...

literature-2
Throwback Thursday — Writing in Books

Do you write comments in the margins or the covers of your books? If you do, according to ...

books
‘Wolf Hall’ and the Anti-Catholic (and Anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, etc.) Moment

Writing at the Catholic Difference, Catholic scholar George Weigel presents a powerful t...

humor-2
Throwback Thursday: Wit—The Universal and the Uniquely American

In the half-century following the Civil War, the American culture curdled, coalesced, and ...

culture101
‘American Style in American Fiction’: It’s Unique and in Many Ways Superior

It might be a pointless exercise to compare the literatures of two nations separated by mo...

fiction1
‘Saint Odd’: A Fond Farewell to Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas

Ozzie Boone said that any talent—whether to write songs or to write novels or to track p...

art
Avenging the Honor of Free Speech

January 7, 2015, will be remembered as the day Islamic terrorists declared war against f...

culture101
Simenon’s ‘Transparent Detective’ Mysteries Return to Print

One of the great achievements in European popular fiction during the twentieth century was...

books
‘No Place’ Is a Bad Place—Le Guin’s Timeless Message of ‘The Lathe of Heaven’

The word utopia literally means "no place" in the original Greek. Thomas More named his f...

culture101
A Good Month to Read Gothic/Horror Innovator and Master Edgar Allan Poe

If you're thinking about doing some gothic/horror reading this month, you can't go wrong b...

books
Jack Carter Returns

"The rain rained.” It takes a tremendous amount of courage, or foolishness, to begin a...

literature-2
Melville Davisson Post’s Mysteries: Relief for Those Weary of Excessive Darkness

Many readers find modern genre fiction to be excessively "dark" and depressive, and for go...

books
Koontz’s Latest: Lyrical, Tragic, and Brilliant

After you have suffered great losses and known much pain, it is not cowardice to wish to l...

culture-and-economics
Things Have Changed

Poor Pete Seeger.  Not even dead a week, and he’s already rolling over in his grave. ...