Recently, historians have sought to understand how and why Americans continue to remember their civil war. Memory of the bloodiest conflict on U.S. soil remains fresh in popular imagination, kept alive by legions of Civil War buffs...
Joan Givner’s biography of Katherine Anne Porter possesses this “passion for life”; it is a full and moving dramatization of an inner portrait of Porter as she fought to establish an artistic integrity for herself against the most unlikely...
In support of the revised version of childhood, Nicholas Orme, who holds a senior academic position at the University of Exeter, and who is the author of several books on medieval schools and education, has collected an impressive amount of...
Since liberalism is shot through with compromise at the level of political action, it is constantly in need of moral grounding. Reclaiming Liberalism’s examination of the principles set forth in the classic texts, as illuminated by the...
Andrew Burstein’s lively and perceptive book not only provides an engaging portrait of a long-forgotten age, delightfully populated with characters worthy of a novel, but it offers an extended reflection on the role of memory and history in...
But while William Empson is often praised and his influence noted in many places, he remains an elusive figure, a modern marvel whose “brilliance” we admire even as we feel somewhat uneasy about it.
Forty years ago a volume of essays on Milton’s poetry by a number of well-known academic critics bore the title The Living Milton. Is Milton the poet still alive among us today? In answer, it may be doubted whether his work is either much...
