Check out Alan Wald‘s longform review of Laura Marriss’s translation of Jean-Yves Frétigné’s To Live Is to Resist: The Life of Antonio Gramsci. There is a lot in Wald’s piece, but I want to call your attention to this passage:...
new books
Episode 98: “Conversions: Spiritual and Political”
What do Sammy Davis Jr., Muhammad Ali, Clare Booth Luce, Whitaker Chambers, and Charles Colson all have in common? They all had very public religious conversions. In this episode, historian Rebecca Davis joins us to talk about her new book Public...
Current Associate Editor Felicia Wu Song on the “perils of digital discipleship”
Listen to Felicia Wu Song’s interview with Heather Thompson Day at Christianity Today. In addition to her work at Current, she teaches sociology at Westmont College and is the author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the...
The Penguin Book of Exorcisms
Yes, such a book exists. It is edited by Texas State religious studies scholar Joseph P. Laycock and it is the subject of James Butler’s 3249 word review at London Review of Books. Here is a taste of Butler’s review:...
More books to help us understand the Russia-Ukraine war
Harvard University Press offers seven: Stanislav Aseyev, In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas Volodymyr Rafeyenko, Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love Serhii Plokhy, The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present Yuri Kostenko, Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History Karel C....
Johann Neem “walks among the ruins” of the modern university
Some of you may recall our conversation with Johann Neem in Episode 54 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. In that episode we talked with the Western Washington University historian about his book What’s the Point of College....
A patriotism reclamation narrative?
This is how political scientist Maxwell G. Burkey describes Stephen B. Smith’s new book Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes. His review shows little sympathy for Smith’s project. Before we get to Burkey’s review, here is a synopsis of...
Episode 95: “The Lost Promise of American Universities”
American universities entered the 1960s with the hope of bringing a high-quality system of universal higher education to all comers. But by the early 1970s hope turned to despair as universities gave way to neoliberalism, corporatism, and a powerful conservative...
Capitalism exhibits “moral idiocy”
I just learned about Christian cultural critic Rodney Clapp‘s recent book Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age. (I have never met Clapp, but he was the acquisition editor at Baker Books who offered me a contract for Why...
Episode 94: “Gettysburg, 1963”
Our guest in this episode is Gettysburg College historian Jill Ogline Titus. Her new book, Gettysburg 1963, tells the story of the centennial celebration of the Civil War in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Through an examination of the experiences of political...
Current Associate Editor Felicia Wu Song publishes Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age
Congratulations to Felicia Wu Song, Professor of Sociology at Westmont College and Associate Editor of Current on the publication of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age (InterVarsity Press). Here is the IVP Press: We’re being...
Roosevelt Montas’s “heartfelt defense of the Eurocentricity of a Great Books curriculum”
Historian Steve Mintz‘s recent column at Inside Higher Ed reviews Roosevelt Montas‘s forthcoming book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. Here is a taste: For far too long, he...
Eric Miller reviews Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn’s Ars Vitae
Eric Miller is editor of Current. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn is a Current contributor. And some of you recall my podcast conversation with Lasch-Quinn in Episode 77 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. Here is a taste of Miller’s review...
Secession is not a new idea
Here is historian Alan Taylor at The Washington Post: In our polarized times, talk of secession blooms on the losing side of bitterly contested national elections. After the 2016 election, some liberal Californians proposed a referendum to seek independence. Last December in...
Check out the 2021 History Summit
Lindsey Chervinsky is back with another summit. Watch: Authors and books include: Michael Hattem, Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution Ben Wright, Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism Carolyn Eastman, The Strange...
The Author’s Corner with Peter Wirzbicki
Peter Wirzbicki is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. This interview is based on his new book, Fighting for the Higher Law: Black and White Transcendentalists Against Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write...
Italian-Americans who supported Mussolini
When I interviewed my Italian-American grandfather before he died several years ago at the age of 103, he told me that there were members of my extended family in America who supported Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. I though about...
How did Democrats lose “Joe Bailey”
Over at Dissent, historian Gabriel Winant reviews two new books on working people. The first is David Paul Kuhn’s The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution. The other is Jacob S. Hacker...
A southern evangelical in New York City
Elizabeth Passarella is a southerner who has lived in New York City for twenty-one years. I am eager to take a look at her new collection of essays, Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York. On her...
Episode 81: God’s Law and Order
On June 1, 2020, Donald Trump declared himself a “law and order” president and marched to historic St. John’s Church for a photo-op with a Bible. Our guest in this episode, historian Aaron Griffith, helps us understand why evangelicals cheered...