Let's Explore What Others Ignore
Charles de Foulcauld, Writings Selected with an Introduction by Robert Ellsberg. Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916) was born into a French aristocratic family. As a student he was affable, agnostic, lazy, pudgy, and gluttonous. He surprised everyone with his success as…
One cannot read Christopher Dawson’s The Crisis of Western Education without feeling a tremendous sense of loss – the loss of purpose, the loss of a full life, the loss of the future. I’ll quote Dawson at length here, because…
“For the new paganism has nothing in common with the poetical idealization of Hellenic myth by the humanists and classicists of recent centuries: it is the unloosing of the powers of the abyss — the dark forces that have been…
The Lord as Their Portion, The Story of Religious Orders and How They Shaped Our World, by Elizabeth Rapley. Elizabeth Rapley takes on the monumental task of presenting a comprehensive overview of Catholic religious orders from their roots in Christian…
With God in America, The Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit, Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., Compiled and edited by John M. DeJak and Marc Lindeijer, S.J. When Fr. Walter Ciszek came back to the United States after 23 years captivity…
Empire of Ice and Stone, The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk, by Buddy Levy. It’s a very suspenseful, rather complicated Arctic exploration story that all started in 1913. The author’s angle on the adventure is a tale of…
In 1939, an American Jesuit priest, Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, slipped into the Soviet Union in hopes of ministering to Catholics who had been deprived of their priests by the communist government. In short order he was arrested, mercilessly interrogated…
Amundsen. Shackleton. Peary. Nansen. The pantheon of Arctic exploration is full of legends, but one you probably never heard of who belongs there is Valerian Albanov. Although a big fan of Arctic exploration books, I had never heard of Albanov…
With God in Russia, by Walter J. Ciszek, SJ, with Daniel L. Flaherty, SJ. In 1939, an American Jesuit priest named Walter J. Ciszek (born in 1904) slipped into the Soviet Union using a false identity, in the hope of…
The Shallows, What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, originally published in 2010, with an updated afterword (2020). “Of all the sacrifices we make when we devote ourselves to the Internet as our universal medium, the…
After writing my short review of an 18-year-old ER episode I couldn’t forget, I started thinking about books I’ve read over the years that similarly stuck in my mind. I came up with 33 of them. This is by no…
Leo Tolstoy’s non-fiction book The Kingdom of God Is Within You is a forceful argument for non-violent resistance — and against organized religion, governments, and the entirety of pagan civilization under which we have lived for thousands of years. Throw Christianity and…
Longitude, first published in 1995, is a best-selling, award-winning book about how Europeans figured out how to determine longitude at sea during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As early as the time of Columbus, Europeans relied heavily on sea…
Orwell gave us a good look at what’s beneath the surface. Quite relevant: Key dialog: “How does one man assert power over another? By making him suffer Exactly. Obedience is not enough. Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Otherwise, you…
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) wrote a weekly column for The Illustrated London News from 1908 to 1936. I compiled the quotes below from my reading of these essays, which were compiled by Ignatius Press in Volumes 27-37 of The Collected…
Trial by Ice, by Richard Parry, is a fascinating and exciting account of the 1871 Polaris Expedition, an American naval mission to discover the North Pole. The story is absolutely remarkable in itself, but what makes the book so valuable…
George Washington signed Thanksgiving into being with the following proclamation. Thanksgiving Proclamation [New York, 3 October 1789] By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation. Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence…
Here are 10 reasons why NFL football is a horrible product that shouldn’t be selling. A constant flood of injuries makes the game a war of attrition. The longterm effects of injuries on ex-players are horrific and tragic. The quality…
The English historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) wrote The Judgment of the Nations in 1942, when the battle between Nazi Germany and Western civilization was far from decided. While Dawson’s ideas are largely a response to the catastrophic rise of totalitarianism…
Many years ago, I, along with several collaborators who most likely would prefer to remain anonymous, invented a drink that might have revolutionized the cocktail industry. For reasons that remain hazy, we never got around to bringing it to market.…