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Tag: Historical fiction

Reviews

The Heebie-Jeebie Girl by Susan Petrone

Posted on April 21, 2020 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

This may be the real gift of this book and its real magic, Susan Petrone’s moving us from indifference to understanding and caring for others and our world, and...

Reviews

Sword of Kings by Bernard Cornwell

Posted on February 16, 2020 by Jeff Grim / 0 Comment

Sword of Kings by Bernard Cornwell continues the chronicles of Uhtred of Bebbanburg in the Saxon Tales. Here is a brief summary of the book from the publisher: ...

Reviews

The Horseman’s Song by Ben Pastor

Posted on January 2, 2020 by Jeff Grim / 1 Comment

The Horseman’s Song by Ben Pastor is another installment in the mystery series of Wehrmacht Officer Martin von Bora–this book is a prequel to the fo...

Reviews

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Kevin Holtsberry / 1 Comment

An ode to the vanished West that captures the splendor of the Rockies as much as the small human mysteries that pass through them, this svelte stand-alone has ...

Reviews

The Chocolate Maker’s Wife by Karen Brooks

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Jeff Grim / 0 Comment

Brooks brings to life the time period. Her descriptions of London are real and vivid and helps the reader to easily visualize the scenes. She also captures the ...

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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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