Recently added articles from Modern Age:
Conservatism and the challenge of the "Modern Age".(Editorial)
Mar 22, 2008; Young, R.V. ... This issue of Modern Age begins with an intense focus on the concept of place, which is a crucial element in any truly conservative consideration of the moral and cultural wellbeing of society. Mark Malvasi reflects upon the enduring enigma of the American South. Conservatives especially ...
The Lasting South? A reconsideration after fifty years.(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Malvasi, Mark G. ... From the perspective of the twenty-first century, the 1950s seem to many Americans a decade of affluence, security, optimism, and contentment set apart from the uncertain and discordant years that preceded and followed them, an interlude when life was simpler, easier, and happier. The ...
A lesson in hermeneutics.(Poem)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2008; Lake, Paul ... <Pre> In Kenya, vervet monkeys take the ground Until a sentry gives a chattering bark, Which in the simple vervet lexicon Means snake, and connotes evil, death and dark. Or else the sentry makes a guttural sound That translates in our own more complex tongue To hawk or eagle circling ...
Adalbert Stifter and the "Biedermeier" imagination.(Critical essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Devlin, Roger ... An historian once suggested that the continued availability of classic works of literature in the Soviet Union helped victims of the communist "experiment" retain their grip on sanity by reminding them what normal human life and society were like. With the progress of social engineering in ...
Taking back the cosmopolis.(A DEBATE ON LOCALISM & COSMOPOLITANISM)(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Webb, Adam K. ... In the early years of the new century, an ideological fault line cuts across the globe. It does not divide some regions of the world from others, as those who talk of a "clash of civilizations" would have us believe. Instead, it recurs within each society and cleaves humanity in two. ...
My home in the cosmopolitan anti-liberal menagerie.(A DEBATE ON LOCALISM & COSMOPOLITANISM)(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Rowland, Tracey ... The central thesis of Adam Webb's essay is that anti-liberal traditions need not be parochial, that cosmopolitans can find themselves at home in the anti-liberal menagerie--and indeed, that for anti-liberalism to be successful, it needs to expand its horizons and develop a more ...
Cosmopolitanism with Real Roots.(A DEBATE ON LOCALISM & COSMOPOLITANISM)(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Reno, R.R. ... Adam Webb has the right enemies. He worries that elite culture is in the grips of a cosmopolitan sentiment that makes war on tradition. We are increasingly dominated by atomistic universalists (to use his telling twist on C. B. Macpherson's original term, atomistic individualism). They see ...
Loving the world.(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Shiffman, Mark ... "You can't be universal without being provincial, can you?" --ROBERT FROST It seems to me that all the foregoing discussions of possible "cosmopolitanisms" have privileged the second half of that term over the first, offering us one or another form of ...
Vaux-le-vicomte.(Poem)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2008; Brosman, Catharine Savage ... <Pre> This vast estate, a parvenu's grand dream, was purchased with the veins of revenue that Fouquet syphoned by a clever scheme from royal taxes, as his royal due. Le Notre's gardens, noble in design prolonged the classic forms of the chateau, whose three pavilions, dome, and ...
The energy crisis.(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Hodgson, P.E. ... The world demand for energy is rapidly increasing. We need energy to warm our homes, to cook our meals, to travel and communicate, and to power our factories. The amount of energy available to us determines not only our standard of living, but also how long we live. Detailed statistics ...
The young Stephen Tonsor: teacher, historicist, and conservative.(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; Amato, Joseph A. ... "I am a historian; I am a patient man; the truth will out."--Stephen Tonsor I have been grateful to Stephen Tonsor since the first day I walked into his classroom fifty years ago. (1) It was fall semester, 1958, at the University of Michigan. A friend recommended that I take ...
A prayer for Livia Grace at Christmas.(Poem)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2008; Wilson, James Matthew ... <Pre> There's little room left in this house for poetry. Or in this world for any lasting language. The managers and sales reps in the office Who've ticketed their holidays are childless, And looking toward five days of sun and liquor. They know nothing of old books or a young daughter ....
Office of good intentions.(Poem)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2008; Williams, Mary Katherine ... <Pre> In the office of good intentions, I maintain a small desk In a dusty corner where paper scraps and clips are strewn (Some might say artfully) waiting a firm purpose to proceed with one choice item from a slate of worthy candidates. As ear-plugged mariners of myth I sail straight ...
The redemption of the Clerks.(Imagining Our Time: Recollections and Reflections on American Writing)(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; Winchell, Mark Royden ... Imagining Our Time: Recollections and Reflections on American Writing by Lewis P- Simpson (Baron Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007). xv + 264 pp. The story of the original series of the Southern Review has been told often and well. (The most comprehensive treatment ...
Not the West, but Europe.(Europe East and West )(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; Domitrovic, Brian ... Europe East and West by Norman Davies (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006). 560 pp. Stanford is notorious as the university that killed off "Western Culture," but perhaps that reputation is undeserved. In the late 1980s, Stanford did indeed scrap a requirement that had existed in its ...
Never a man for causes.(George Kennan: A Study in Character)(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; Hudson, Walter M. ... George Kennan: A Study in Character by John Lukacs (Yale University Press, 2007). 224 pp. For a few years, from 1946 to 1949, George Frost Kennan was at the center of world events. He also lived long and wrote much, and he remains a puzzle to many. Liberals have admired his ...
Wagner's ambiguities.(Richard Wagner and the Jews)(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; Stove, R.J. ... Richard Wagner and the Jews, by Milton E. Brener (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2005). 343 pp. Acentury and a quarter after Richard Wagner's death, the observation of Wagner scholar Bryan Magee remains pertinent: "there are two Wagners in our culture, almost ...
A founder of nothing.(Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr)(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; Gutzman, Kevin R.C. ... Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg (New York: Viking, 2007). xx + 540 pp. Aaron Burr is not by any definition I know of a "founder" of anything. He did not help to author a state or federal constitution, nor did he help to ratify one. He did not serve in ...
Pro haereses.(The New Inquisitions: Heretic Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism)(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; Blum, Christopher O. ... The New Inquisitions: Heretic Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism, by Arthur Versluis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). xii + 190 pp. "Had Gnosticism become the dominant model in early Christianity, Christianity would have been a much more ...
Rene Girard's accusation: intellectuals are the castrators of meaning: "after language, man is becoming deconstructed": eugenics is a form of human sacrifice: "sexuality is the problem, not the solution": the ruthless ideas of a great thinker.(DOCUMENTATION)(Interview)(Reprint)
Mar 22, 2008 ... Despite being 84 years of age, Rene Girard has lost none of his nerve as a definitively radical thinker. He is working on a new essay about Karl von Clausewitz. The author of great contemporary works such as Violence and the Sacred and The Scapegoat, recently elected among the forty ...