De gustibus non est disputandum is a snippet of medieval wisdom mostly honored in the breach as evidenced by Michael Kammen 8217 s Visual Shock a cheerful history of more than a century and a half of arguments about art Kammen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of American culture and his re

In his essay Reflections on Gandhi 1949 George Orwell declared Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent By that standard Leonard Woolf 1880-1969 needs to undergo severe scrutiny since Beatrice Webb called him a saint with very considerable intelligence a man wit

Any reviewer will find his benevolence to an author increased when he finds a distant relative playing even a minor role in the narrative In the Rev Andrew M Greeley rsquo s latest novel Irish Linen I found Tom Linehan serving as the Irish charg eacute d rsquo affaires in Switzerland in 1944

A wave of recent books has left the distinct impression that the harnessing of religious ideals to political power has ushered in a new Dark Ages in American public life In God and the Welfare State Lew Daly departs from the trend of near-hysterical claims by exploring the religious underpinnings

One could do worse than devote some time during Lent to 'lectio divina' and reading the Scriptures prayerfully.

In 1940 the Carnegie Foundation commissioned a study to assess the state of race relations in America segregation and white supremacy in the South The Foundation chose a Swedish sociologist named Gunnar Myrdal to lead the project They selected a non-American scholar because they wanted an outsid