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Author: Kevin Holtsberry

I work in communications and public affairs. I try to squeeze in as much reading as I can while still spending time with my wife and two kids (and cheering on the Pittsburgh Steelers and Michigan Wolverines during football season - oh, and watching golf too).
Reviews

A Creepy, Atmospheric Young Adult Story From Kevin Wignall

Posted on January 16, 2021 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

It wasn't riveting or intense but I thought the characters were well done and once I started I wanted to find out what happened. There was enough mystery and t...

Reviews

Jim Geraghty Returns with Another Dangerous Clique Novel

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

“Ripped from the headlines” plot with Geraghty’s sense of humor makes this a quick read.   When I went to post my review of Jim Geraghty’...

Views

Senator Josh Hawley VS Simon & Schuster

Posted on January 8, 2021 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

I think both S&S and Senator Hawley chose the road of escalation. A small step in the grand scheme of things, but a step nonetheless.

Asides

Trump, Hawley, Cruz & Dostoevsky: They are our own Stepan Trofimoviches

Posted on January 7, 2021 by Kevin Holtsberry / 1 Comment

Trump, he loves this. He loves the bile, the wrath, the mockery. It’s a well-done steak to him, with extra ketchup. But Hawley and Cruz? I bet they are befuddle...

Views

The Best of 2020: Top 5 Nonfiction

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

A totally nonscientific, off the cuff, Top 5 nonfiction books I read (not necessarily published in) in 2020 A Time to Build by Yuval Levin Yuval Levin has becom...

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Last Four

  • A Creepy, Atmospheric Young Adult Story From Kevin Wignall
  • Jim Geraghty Returns with Another Dangerous Clique Novel
  • Senator Josh Hawley VS Simon & Schuster
  • Trump, Hawley, Cruz & Dostoevsky: They are our own Stepan Trofimoviches

Notes & Asides

  • Trump, he loves this. He loves the bile, the wrath, the mockery. It’s a well-done steak to him, with extra ketchup. But Hawley and Cruz? I bet they are befuddled and mystified. How could it possibly have come to this? They are, then, our own Stepan Trofimoviches. It was all a game to them, until it wasn’t. They are, like him, utterly frivolous. If they had any dignity, any moral backbone, they would resign their offices. But the very frivolity that led them, and us, to this pass is the vice that will prevent them from acting honorably. I hope I am wrong, but I expect they will go to their graves thinking How could we have known?

    Frivolity - Alan Jacobs

    - Trump, Hawley, Cruz & Dostoevsky: They are our own Stepan Trofimoviches
  • While the laws that we live under matter a great deal, Christians need to recover the primacy of the personal over the political more than anything else. If we can’t love our neighbors in a personal, politically agnostic, face-to-face way, they’ll turn to synthetic and unreal ideological communities to fill the gap left by the loneliness of their daily lives.

    The road back to sanity, solidarity, and social trust on both sides of the political spectrum will involve turning away from this ideological cul-de-sac and back toward personal communities once more. If Christian churches won’t do this, they risk being exploited as political playthings of the powers that be. -- Christianity as Ideology: The Cautionary Tale of the Jericho March

    - Christianity & the Jericho March
  • You’ll notice we are not having a national debate about paying off poor people’s mortgages. We could do that just as easily if the self-declared champions of the poor had any interest in anything other than their own status and their own appetites.

    They don’t.

    The College-Debt Debate Is a Culture-War Battle

    - Kevin Williamson on the college debt debate
  • Wharton’s novel was little appreciated in its time, and it hasn’t benefited from the same revival of interest that eventually rescued F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, another Jazz Age novel. Maybe it’s because our culture is created and largely controlled by latter-day Pauline (and Paul) Manfords. Gatsby’s novel is held to reject the American dream itself as a falsity, obscene wealth as corrupting, and the WASP ruling class as a permanent source of oppression, despite its evident decline. Compared with Wharton’s novel, which cuts deeper and is more personal, Gatsby looks like a cheap attempt at scapegoating. For Twilight Sleep is a satire of the modern age, but it targets some of our permanent temptations. If we’re about to embark on a new Roaring Twenties, Wharton’s book will remind us that we’ve been there before.

    Michael Brendan Dougherty

    - Wharton vs Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age Novel
  • Mental Anchors for Information Overload - my review of Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs

    - Me in the University Bookman on Breaking Bread with the Dead

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