Reviews and News:
How two English authors helped start the Spanish Civil War.
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The modern debate over American intervention abroad began with the Spanish-American War.
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The disappearance of Eastern Europe: "Go to Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Bratislava, Wrocław, Debrecen, Timișoara, or Tallinn. Walk the streets. Visit the malls and cellphone kiosks. How would you know that you aren't in Bremen, Charleroi, Newcastle, or Fargo? The stores are all the same. Marks & Spencer, H&M, C&A. The people dress alike. They watch the same things, drive the same cars. Where are the half-wooden Trabants and miniature Fiats of yesteryear?"
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In Case You Missed It:
Nancy Campbell on the pleasures and endurance of letters in The Times Literary Supplement
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T. S. Eliot and the rise of the managerial class: The anti-aristocratic managers of the state, Eliot argued, "form an anti-culture and will only share in common with one another the technique of management, i.e., the committee meetings whereby they dominate a society. Believing they deserve their status and the vaulted space they occupy, they have no sense of duty or gratitude to the larger body they rule."
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Tolkien's riddles and religion: Riddles and religious mysteries are not the same. They are mirror images of each other.
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The Spartan way of life: "Spartans were 'a great puzzle' to the other Greeks. At the same time, they were "almost universally regarded with awe, just as they are now." Doggedly isolationist, they turned foreigners away at the border and were known for their distrust of flowery speech (hence the term 'laconic,' from Sparta's original name, Lacedaemon). Thucydides depicts their King Archidamus as stressing the Spartans' trust in collective discipline and distrust of innovation and individual talent in contrast with the bustling, argumentative, and ambitious Athenians. Although always ready for war, they avoided foreign entanglements because they knew that war could destabilize their internal constitution by sparking a slave rebellion or enabling individual Spartans to gain through military glory abroad a personal pre-eminence rigorously suppressed at home."
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Interview: Bill Kristol talks with Andrew Ferguson about journalism, American culture, and higher education
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Classic Essay: Robert Reilly, "The Music of the Spheres"
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