In Remembrance of James Q. Wilson
Jim Wilson opted to spend his last couple of years at Boston College, and I, and all my colleagues, were enriched by his presence. Jim, of course, was a conservative, and I am a liberal. But before I go on about how we nonetheless saw eye to eye on this issue or that, there was something else he represented that I both admired and, to the best of my ability, tried to emulate. The best way I can say it is that Jim was old-fashioned. READ MORE >>
One Right
The Power Lover
Religious Realism
DURING HIS LIFETIME, John Patrick Diggins produced a seemingly unending stream of books, all of them marked by a rare combination of wide-ranging intellectual history and highly opinionated commentary. It comes as a welcome surprise to learn that the stream did not dry up with his death. His partner (Elizabeth Harlan), his former student (Robert Huberty), and his editor (Doug Mitchell) have combined to put out this slim, intriguing book on Reinhold Niebuhr. READ MORE >>
The Visitor
MAX WEBER IN AMERICA? The idea seems almost preposterous. We often think of Weber as the quintessential European thinker: abstract, worldly, brooding, and difficult. The America of his period of greatest productivity, the first two decades of the twentieth century, comes down to us as isolationist, anti-intellectual, bombastic, and about to embark on flapperdom. How could one have any influence on the other? READ MORE >>
The Big Shrink
I LIVE IN A DIFFERENT country than the one into which I was born in 1942. I have never been quite able to pinpoint exactly what makes it so different. More than any other book I’ve read in recent years, Age of Fracture, by the Princeton historian Daniel T. Rodgers, has helped me to discover and to understand that difference. READ MORE >>
Studies Show
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement By David Brooks (Random House, 424 pp., $27) READ MORE >>
The Grounds of Courage
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy By Eric Metaxas (Thomas Nelson, 591 pp., $29.99) READ MORE >>
