Shibata There is a fine little collection of essays about atheism by Bertrand Russell, entitled Why I Am Not A Christian, which I read on subway rides about the city the past week. It is light reading, and his mature essays are in a lucid style which offers no difficulties (some of his earlier essays, such […]
Category Archives: Reviews of Books
Bertrand Russell’s Atheist Essays.
14-Sep-11Jeju City When I tried to read Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain while in college – a book compared (by the publishing trade) with Augustine’s Confessions – I was astounded to find the book self-promoting, egotistical, petty, and posturing, without a single elevated thought or even sentence that could place it with the Confessions. This is one […]
Saint Francis, Nature, and Poverty.
23-May-11I have been reading Thomas of Celano’s two lives of Saint Francis, with all the complicated pleasure of advancing age. In 1973 the Franciscan Herald Press put out a lovely edition of the early writings about Francis, Saint Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, a beautifully executed book, hardbound, with maps of Italy and Assisi, […]
Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion.
20-Feb-11The Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion is not a good book; it is unorganized, gossipy, filled with tangents, of little depth, and boring. Oscar Wilde said there were no moral or immoral books; “books are well written, or badly written, that is all.” The God Delusion is badly written. I could tell I was […]
I’ve been impressed recently by the intelligence, articulateness, and unapologetically rakish character of Christopher Hitchens, and curiosity about and respect for the man prompted me to take a look at the fashionable atheist books of the day, beginning with his God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. As is always the case with modern […]
Erich Fromm’s Art of Loving.
14-Dec-10I take as true and interesting the following statement of Erich Fromm: There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the […]
On Native Plant Gardening.
07-Aug-10Not long ago, when advising some friends who were about to start a garden, I told them to plant a state-of-the-art garden, meaning not a technologically complex one, but rather one in accord with the best knowledge we have of what constitutes excellence in a home garden. This can be expressed on the smallest levels […]
Lead Us Not Into Penn Station.
11-Jun-10Lots of reading getting done here. One book I read last week was Jill Jonnes’ Conquering Gotham, about the construction of Penn Station (ugh these titles; can’t we just call it “The Building of Penn Station”?). The book makes a good read for the NYC enthusiast; part of the pleasure is deepening one’s knowledge of […]
Carl Jung.
26-May-10“My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.” – Carl Jung An old paperback I possess advertises its author thus: “Doctor and scientist, visionary and thinker, Carl Jung ranks with Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud as one of the great minds of the twentieth century.” […]
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill.
12-Mar-10One of my friends, who is bemused by my general policy of abstinence from modern novels, walked me over to the Porter Square Bookshop in Somerville to purchase me a copy of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. I read the first page and saw the prose was taut enough for me to give it a try. […]