Category: Book Reviews

If someone we trust suggests a good book for us to read, we are more inclined to do so. On the other hand, if someone we trust tells us not to bother reading this or that book, we usually heed their advice. Book reviews provide that service. The reviewers that contribute to our website are excellent critics. So far, all of our book reviews, except one, have been commendatory. Brian Kelly’s review of Deepak Chopra’s The Third Jesus was condemnatory.

Positive book reviews that appear in good Catholic media outlets would not be there if the books were not of great value. Earnest reviewers would not bother to push mediocrity. Their mission is to whet the appetites of potential readers. They want to share their own enthusiasm for another’s written work in order to benefit the readers of their own columns. It is actually an act of charity. A potential reader has to be motivated. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out: “There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.”

Liberty, the God That Failed

Review of Liberty, the God That Failed: Policing the Sacred and Constructing the Myths of the Secular State, from Locke to Obama (Angelico Press, 2012) In his first encyclical, Inscrutabili (On the Evils Affecting Modern Society), April 21, 1878, Pope … Continue reading

Anti-Christ Word Games

John Rao Black Legends and the Light of the World (Forest Lake, MN, Remnant Press, 2011) ISBN: 1-890740-17-9 Dr. John C. Rao, D. Phil., Oxford, is Associate Professor of History at St. John’s University and director of the Roman Forum. … Continue reading

The Gentle Air and the Hurricane

The book is written like a novel, but it is not one. It purports to be true history, written in the genre of a novel. Each chapter is a series of tableaux that form a miniature biography of a single family member. If the author set out to undo notions of the drab and colorless Middle Ages, his laudable goal was met with considerable success. For here we find ourselves in the world of chivalry and religious fervor, with personalities as colorful as their knightly heraldry and stained-glass windows. Continue reading