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Category Archives: Reviews of Books

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia.

28-Aug-13

buy neurontin canadian pharmacy Several years ago one of my college professors asked me if I was reading Clive James. (The implication was that I should be.) I told him I had never heard of him. He was shocked: James was a regular contributor to those learned periodicals that a certain class of people consider obligatory reading for intelligent […]

Freud and the Future of an Illusion.

19-Aug-13

buy Neurontin A friend recently lent me a copy of Clive James’ book Cultural Amnesia – now that is a good friend – which I devoured over the course of a little over a week. The book is excellent, and what is particularly lovely about it is that it filled me with the desire to read everything […]

Alice Von Hildebrand and the Genders.

14-Jun-13

We all know the stereotypes about men and women. Women cook, take care of children, are emotional and faithful and put flowers on things; men make money, seek power, build things, never cry and are emotionless beasts when it comes to sex and food. To some extent we all have these stereotypes in our head […]

The Golden Spruce and our Forests.

19-Apr-13

A friend recently lent me a book and I repaid him by reading it. The book, The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant, is about an unusual Sitka spruce, several hundred years old, which had golden needles in place of the usual green ones. Golden foliage is an odd but regularly occurring plant mutation, highly prized […]

Apologia Pro Carolo Gustavo Jung.

08-Jan-13

There are some rules in the intellectual world which are pretty reliable for detecting bloviating stupidity, or blathering solipsism (or however you want to render b.s.), and one of them is this: if someone launches a five-thousand word attack on a noted author, and almost never quotes a line from the voluminous works of that […]

Farming and Classics.

01-Jan-13

There exists a memoir entitled Of Farming and Classics, which to judge from the title seemed like something I might find relevant.  I wrote a review of it for the University Bookman.

Hitchens, Stegner, Mortality, and Moderns.

28-Nov-12

Sickness very much getting the better of me in the days following Thanksgiving, I spent three days indoors and very nearly all the time in bed. Having a great number of books at my disposal, being in the family house, for whatever inscrutable reason I read Christopher Hitchens’ Mortality on Friday, and Wallace Stegner’s Crossing […]

The Appian Way, by Bob Kaster.

28-Jun-12

Robert Kaster’s The Appian Way, Ghost Road, Queen of Roads was my companion for a day here in the woods, in between spurts of gardening and writing. The book is short – 120 pages – and generally delightful.  It consists of some scattered historical anecdotes and observations coupled with a few bursts of travel writing. […]

Greatest Hits of 2011 at the University Bookman.

27-Dec-11

The editor of the University Bookman sent out a list of the most-read pieces on the site in 2011, and the interview I gave there was one of them.  The top five pieces are all excellent and I recommend them all: “Tyranny of the Herd.” By Paul Beston. http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/tyranny-of-the-herd/ “Live Where We Are.” By John […]

Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire.

06-Nov-11

I spent a few evenings in the past week reading Desert Solitaire, which I did with pleasure.  The book is hardly perfect but then again, neither are we.  A popular book such as this must be flawed.  It does not have the polish of a book like Walden and will not last as long, but […]