Category: Reviews

Fyodor Abramov was awarded the State Prize of the U.S.S.R. in 1975 for his trilogy of life on a rural commune, The Pryaslins, of which Two Winters and Three Summers is the second volume. “Begin at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop,” was the King’s advice to Alice, but Harcourt Brace Jovanovich...

This book presents essays written by George Panichas, which initially appeared from 1962 to 1980. Panichas’s essays take the measure of a generation. What is their verdict? It is not a happy one. Panichas finds modern conditions to be those defined by technology and Benthamism, by empiricism and quantification, and everywhere “humanistic values . ....

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. Laudable in breadth and clarity, his work nonetheless reveals only too well why most modern...

The Marxist and the artist view human existence in fundamentally different ways. Marxism regards human existence as absolutely knowable because scientific laws govern history and because materialism underlies all of existence. It is not so simple for the artist. Although the artist may study history, he knows that nature is not a closed circle within...

Lanham is certainly ambitious enough. He proposes to resolve “three overlapping perplexities”: a literacy crisis so widespread it has shaken our national self-esteem as an educated democracy; a school and college curriculum that no longer knows what subjects should be studied or when; and a humanism so directionless, unreasoned, and sentimental that it seems almost...

“Liberty, the daughter of oppression, after having brought forth several fair children, as Riches, Arts, Learning, Trade, and many others, was at last delivered of her youngest daughter, called FACTION.” —Jonathan Swift There are many things wrong with this book, beginning with its title. The Liberal Mind is not what this book is about. (Nor...

From its inception in 1923 as the Institute of Social Research until the death of Theodor Adorno in 1969, the Frankfurt School was at the forefront of the debate over the meaning of Marxism. Its leading members included the psychologist Erich Fromm, the sociologists Adorno and Max Horkheimer, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the political scientist...

Few theologians have influenced the spiritual life of the West as profoundly as the lay physicist Galileo Galilei when he successfully challenged the Church’s geocentric world view. Though the Copernican doctrine he championed was originally discovered by a devout Christian, Galileo redefined it within a mechanistic world view which exiled God to the periphery. Shaped...

When the young American poet Ezra Pound arrived in London in the autumn of 1908, he had considerably more on his mind than a tour of Westminster Abbey and a boat ride down the Thames. He was determined to become a noted poet, and—convinced that his own country was little more than a cultural slum—he...

The ancient Western tradition of political thought, appropriate to men seeking freedom and virtue in community, has in our century been hounded into obscure corners by materialists and romantic revolutionaries. Yet, here and there, the tradition remains alive and even shows signs of a renewed vitality. One such sign is the work of William C....

Adler begins his latest book with Aristotle’s admonition: “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” Adler concludes with a recommendation: “The recovery of basic truths, long hidden from view, would eradicate errors that have such disastrous consequences in modern times.” For 10 delightfully lucid chapters in between, he uncovers and...

This is a dry, almost mechanical description of a poorly understood but intriguing and vitally important subject: the GRU. After the KGB, the GRU (Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff) is arguably the second largest and most powerful intelligence agency in the world. The author, whose true name and identity are masked, is a...

It may well be indicative of real progress in America that we are now able to read the Presidential speeches of a man that leading commentators frequently declared unelectable a decade ago. But now that Ronald Reagan’s electability is established beyond doubt, the national media have been busy tagging him as the “most ideological” of...

Texas Politics, by Wilbourn Benton, professor of political science at Texas A&M, is a textbook that surveys the constitution of the state of Texas, with heavy emphasis on the written, legal structure of how the state is run. Much of the book is a dry summary. When he can, the author tells the story of...

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 as a professional writer with religious seriousness. [H]e believed that his writing was the principle professional...

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” or “personal development” do not—that the mind must submit to truth, not the other way...

The title alludes to Whitman’s Democratic Vistas, and David Marc, a professor of American Civilization at Brown University, begins, ends, and sprinkles the middle of this study with quotations from Whitman. The preface announces “a Whitmanian faith in the ability of the individual consciousness to mingle with a collective cultural conscious ness.” And part of...

“The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries History is a pack of lies.” —Bishop Willkin Stubbs Marc Ferro sets out to broaden our horizons. He picks 14 countries (or sometimes ex-countries) to tell us “the vision of the past which is proper to each.” By “proper” he clearly does not mean “correct,” for he puts his stamp...

Irving Bernstein graduated from the University of Rochester in 1937, the same year as the spectacular series of sit-down strikes in the Midwest industrial heartland, the Memorial Day “massacre” at the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago, and the publication of the LaFollette committee’s report on antilabor techniques. His college years saw the emergence of...

After a long neglect, the Austrian school of economics is enjoying a resurgence of both academic and lay interest. In 1981, New York University, a center for Austrian economic thought, convened a conference in honor of the most distinguished leader of this school, Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). A product of that conference, Method, Process and...

Encountered in the right circumstances, Belloc’s prose can become a lifelong addiction. Fortunately, the craving can be as readily satisfied as a thirst (if that is the right word) for cocaine in Hollywood. He wrote so much that one cannot easily run out, and the best of his works (Hills and the Sea, The Cruise...

Though one of the original Agrarians—men now widely considered prophets—Andrew Lytle is an unheralded man of letters. He has been an influential editor, essayist, farmer, poet, and novelist; yet, outside of a small group of men devoted to Southern letters, Lytle has not been fully appreciated. John L. Stewart, the oft-praised Northern historian of the...

The literature of the Serbs must be among the least known in Europe, standing somewhere between the Albanians, whose most famous cultural contribution is John Belushi, and the Scandinavians, who—if they pooled their resources—could field at least a basket ball team of literary celebrities. In modern times, the literary Serb best known to the West...

Books like this one frighten the intelligent reader, while raising the hopes of the naive. By taxing demand deposits at 3 percent per year, Mr. Dahlberg promises to erase all the evils that have tortured this economy for decades. No more inflation, budget deficits, poverty, or unemployment Unfortunately, he is not the first to offer...

Philip Jose Farmer of Peoria, Illinois, is one of the great masters of science fiction. The first of a new series, Dayworld, depicts events in seven distinctly different, wild Manhattan life-styles of the year 3414 A.D.  By portraying a future world government rooted in modern ideas and dilemmas, Farmer continues the science fiction tradition of...

COMMENDABLES   Nightfall for Liberalism? by Richard John Neuhaus   George Parkin Grant: English­ Speaking Justice; Notre Dame; $4.95 paper.   “Liberalism in its generic form is surely something that all decent men accept as good-‘conservatives’ included. Insofar as the word ‘liberalism’ is used to describe the belief that political liberty is a central human...

The Light From the East by Lee Congdon   Martin Jay: Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept From Lukacs to Habermas; University of California Press; Berkeley, CA.   Like the exponents of Critical Theory, the subjects of his first book, Martin Jay considers himself to be an “extraterritorial” outsider. Professor of history at...

Not a Prayer by Steven Hayward   Horst E. Richter: All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man; Harvest House Publishers; Claremont, CA.   There are several ways of thinking about what has come to be called “the decline of the West.” There are the rather sweeping generalizations about secularism by evangelical theologian...

A Tale of Modern Times William Dear: The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III; Houghton Mufflin; Boston.  Dallas Egbert was a genius. At the age of 13 he entered Michi­gan State University to study computer science. MSU assured the Egberts that the university would take special care of the brilliant but remarkably...

After a decade or two of introspective breast-beating, educators are turning from an examination of what is wrong with public schooling to what is right with private schooling. This latest entry to the field examines religious education in the United States. Nearly 5.1 million students attend some sort of private school (K-12), eschewing for whatever...

The Bostonians: Directed by James Ivory; Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Ghabvala; Merchant-Ivory Production. A popular film that is more than chewing gum for the mind is a rare treat, and a novel of power and poignancy, translated into a well-created film, is sheer bliss. The Bostonians is a love story about an archaic Southern man...

Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Last Tycoon by Leonard Mosley; Little Brown, Boston. Movies have not always been taken seriously as art. When Rudolph Arnheim 50 years ago compared film with painting, music, and literature, he was being deliberately controversial. It was a long road from the nickelodeon to artistic respectability. Today film...

Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre by Simone de Beauvoir; Pantheon, New York. It may hurt, but it is useful to know that in matters of foreign translations available at our publishers and bookstores, we live in a well-guarded ghetto. There are protective turrets in the ghetto’s wall, called Sartre, Beauvoir, Gunter Grass, Hein­ rich B6ll,...

Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert; G.P. Putman’s Sons, New York. While waiting for the cinematic spectacle of Dune, we decided that a bit of exploratory work was in order, so we attended to Frank Herbert’s world –– nay, universes –– of Dune. That was no small feat, as it is a trek into Dune,...

Howard Thurman: For the Inward Journey; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego.   During his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Jesse Jackson was widely praised for using the language of black evangelism. Wiser observers recognized that Jackson had actually degraded his inherited religious vocabulary by cutting it loose from its spiritual roots and putting it...