Gertrude Himmelfarb ‘Threads the Needle’ on Lord Acton Biography

Biographers suffer from a myriad of temptations. Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her bibliography to the newly republished Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics, recalls how Acton’s first biographer, Ulrich Noack struggled mightily to reconcile contradictions and tensions in Acton’s thought and in doing so lost much of the man himself. Continue Reading...

Russell Kirk: Conservative, Humanist, Christian

Reading Bradley J. Birzer’s Russell Kirk, one might quibble with the subtitle: An American Conservative, but only because the term “conservative” has been worried like a rag doll in the maw of a Doberman puppy since Kirk first committed ink to paper on the conservative matter nearly 75 years ago. Continue Reading...

Review: ‘No Fear Allowed’

Fear is inevitable. We can either let it stop us in our tracks or use it as “feedback” that we have to do something to move forward. That’s the message in Laura Herring’s new book No Fear Allowed: A Story of Guts, Perseverance, & Making an Impact (Morgan James Publishing, 2015). Continue Reading...

Free ebook: ‘On Christians and Prosperity’

Acton’s latest monograph, On Christians and Prosperity by Rev. James V. Schall will be free as an eBook until midnight on Thursday. To download your free copy, visit Amazon.com. In this work, Schall discusses poverty and economic prosperity, including the Christian calling to contribute to human flourishing and care for the poor. Continue Reading...

Mahoney: New Václav Havel biography is ‘moving and intelligent’

Daniel J. Mahoney reviewed Michael Zantovsky’s 2014 book Havel: A Life in the City Journal last week, calling it “a remarkable book about a complex and genuinely admirable human being.” Václav Havel was a Czech writer, philosopher and dissident who served as the first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia and then the first president of the Czech Republic. Continue Reading...

Review: Hope for the Workplace, Christ in You

Bill Dalgetty’s Hope for the Workplace, Christ in You is rich with stories of people in business who are struggling to integrate their faith and work lives. Weaving biblical parables with dozens of real life stories gleaned from his experience as president of Christians in Commerce International, Dalgetty points—usually explicitly and sometimes in a more nuanced way—to universal truths of human conscience. Continue Reading...