Bryce J. Christensen

Prostitution may not deserve its reputation as the world’s oldest profession, but it has been around for millennia, appearing in virtually every society. In this revised edition of a book originally published in 1978 (under a slightly different title), Vern

Words cannot take us everywhere, nor should they. Before the most sublime truths, we grow reverently still. Confronted with bestiality, we shudder at the unspeakable. But in the Age of Blab, everything must be talked about.” Indeed, modem journalists consider

Like many Englishmen of his generation, Charles Darwin in his youth was an avid reader of William Paley’s The Evidences of Christianity (1794). As Darwin formulated his theory of evolution, he lost his faith in Paley’s argument that nature manifests

When sociologists look at religion, what do they see? Inevitably, they see statistical clusters of churchgoers sorted through ecclesiastical, geographic, and demographic grids. People who want to assess contemporary social trends in American religion would do well to consult this

Galileo Galilei lives in the imagination of every high-school atheist as the archetypal champion of Truth, standing heroically against the malice and superstition of the ecclesiastical authorities who condemned him. This version of the events works wonderfully as melodrama but

Hatred of the past ill becomes a historian. Yet it is hard not to detect this disfiguring animus—paired with an overweening love of contemporaneity—in the works of many modern historians of family life. In recent decades, men such as Philippe

“Tell me, can you find indeed
Nothing sure, no moral plan
Clear prescribed, without your creed?”
—Matthew Arnold

Awaiting trial for a murder he did not commit, Dmitri Karamazov is visited in jail in the closing pages of Dostoevsky’s The

Sprawled on the sands of the New Mexico desert, Isador Isaac Rabi was witness on July 16, 1945, to a demonstration of scientific power so spectacular that neither his welder’s glasses nor his analytical training could fully shield him from

Who has more rights in the American judicial system—a man accused of murder or one accused of child abuse? The accused murderer is guaranteed the good old English right of trial by jury; he’s presumed innocent until proved guilty. He

” . . . to chase the rolling circle’s speed
Or urge the Hying ball . . . “
—Thomas Gray

The Puritans, who once condemned stool ball, quoits, and bowls, would stand in stern judgment of the millions of

Homosexual activists will not like this book. For if ever there were an empirical refutation to the “gay rights” agenda. Gene Antonio has written it. In convincing (sometimes nauseating) detail, Antonio explains why the homosexual movement has provided the ideal

” . . . Words strain, Crack and sometimes break. . . . “
—T.S. Eliot

The ancients, wiser than modem theorists, recognized language as a gift and (at Babel) a curse from the heavens. Even pagans recognized a Word

Fyodor Dostoevsky is among the pioneers of modern literature. However, like so many of the pioneers—particularly T.S. Eliot—he is acknowledged with ambivalence and even reluctance. Like The Waste Land, Dostoevsky’s works are prized for their subtle exploration of modern

Feng Jicai’s volume of short stories is truly a remarkable work. It is one of the first publications by a writer in the People’s Republic of China in which the writer has allowed people to be people. The reader does

Love is everywhere the theme of popular culture, but only rarely a subject for serious contemporary philosophy. Irving Singer, professor of philosophy at MIT, attempts to remedy this imbalance with these two volumes, the first two parts of a trilogy.

For Samuel Johnson, imperatives were dictated by literature and religion. The two were closely tied together in his mind. Indeed, in his laudable study of Johnson’s religious life, Charles Pierce Jr. concludes “that Johnson came to regard his own work

Geometry, most high school students will attest, is a dull subject. This dullness, however, is not only inescapable but essential. Memorizing theorems and deriving proofs is no fun, but doing such tasks teaches us—as “relevant” and “creative” courses in “communication”