The Civilized Reader | Crisis Magazine

Edited by William and Amy Fahey, The Civilized Reader joyfully reviews classic, good books — books that will enrich the life of your family and the minds of your children.

June 13, 2013

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: The Savage Noble

by Sean Fitzpatrick

Nothing conjures up summer quite like a bully, sure-’nough treasure: A kite, a dead rat and a string to swing it with, twelve marbles, part of a jew’s harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool-cannon, a…

June 7, 2013

Shakespeare’s The Tempest

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

Magic (art) is a part of daily life. Whenever parents raise children, teachers educate students, or rulers govern societies, they require the knowledge of the arts that teach these skills. They become magicians or artists by the masterpieces of their…

May 28, 2013

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

by Sean Fitzpatrick

It is a terrible paradox that the pursuit dedicated to improving the human condition bears the greatest potential to destroy humanity. That pursuit is scientific pursuit—ever progressing, ever evolving. Scientific evolution, however, should be simultaneous with engendering the responsibilities scientific…

May 20, 2013

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

by Sean Fitzpatrick

The womb and the tomb—one of the most striking mirror images that our lives have to offer. Babies are buried alive in their warm mothers’girth. Bodies are dead and buried in their cold mother earth. For one, there is the…

May 9, 2013

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

by Sean Fitzpatrick

Edgar Allan Poe was missing. The year was 1849. There had been no trace of Mr. Poe for six days since he left Richmond, Virginia, on September 27th to travel back to his home in New York. His luggage was…

May 2, 2013

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

All I, myself, can do is to urge you to place friendship above every human concern that can be imagined! Nothing else in the whole world is so completely in harmony with nature, and nothing so utterly right, in prosperity…

April 15, 2013

Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes by Mother Goose

by Sean Fitzpatrick

There is a gravestone in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground that legend purports marks the resting place of Mother Goose. Now, whether Mother Goose lived in Boston or any other place in the world is less of a concern than if…

April 11, 2013

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

by Paul Joseph Prezzia

It is a true truism that art imitates life. We might be struck anew by the freshness underlying this proverb if we consider the type of all imitation, the mimicry of a child. Children immediately fix on an animal’s salient…

April 1, 2013

The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen: A Tale of Resurrection

by Sean Fitzpatrick

Just as baptism and burial are seldom associated with one another, neither are a duckling and the Resurrection. The interconnectivity of life and death, however, is paramount to any understanding of Christianity—which understanding is beautifully portrayed in a well-known tale…

March 21, 2013

All Happy Trails Lead West (II)

by Michael Platt

Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black…

March 14, 2013

Shakespeare’s Hamlet

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

In the cosmic struggle between good and evil, Shakespeare presents the relentless conflict between two philosophies that shape the human condition. The philosophy of Claudius, the usurping tyrant who secretly poisoned his brother King Hamlet and married his wife Queen…

March 7, 2013

Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

A book of wisdom by the most eminent man of letters and renowned moralist in the eighteenth century who valued the practical truth of literature (“The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or…

February 28, 2013

Robert Hugh Benson’s Come Rack! Come Rope!

by Joseph Pearce

Robert Hugh Benson was born in 1871, the youngest son of E.W. Benson, a distinguished Anglican clergyman who counted the Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, amongst his friends. In 1882, when Benson was eleven-years-old, his father became Archbishop of Canterbury….

February 18, 2013

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

by Sean Fitzpatrick

Be warned. As you read this, the demons are grinding the glorious creatures of folklore into distorted glorifications of the grotesque. Traditional ghosts and conventional goblins are banished—they are too suggestive of a world opposed to a world that has…

February 7, 2013

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

by Sean Fitzpatrick

This book is not for you… unless you prepare yourself to be initiated into its mysteries through baptism—a Baptism by Beer. This is the shriving of Sherwood, the grace of the Greenwood, the ritual of Robin Hood. If you think…

January 21, 2013

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

In the final chapter of the novel, “Harvesttime,” the March family gathers on an October day to celebrate a New England apple picking festival and reap the abundant fruit waiting to be picked. They have also come to celebrate Mrs.March’s…

January 15, 2013

Shakespeare’s Macbeth

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

Macbeth portrays the agony of a man’s soul in the throes of temptation as he hears the voices of the witches and the voice of Lady Macbeth luring him to commit murder to gain the power of kingship. After being…

January 10, 2013

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

by Sean Fitzpatrick

The arrival of a New Year invites reflection on a particular horror of human existence. A horror that was well exemplified by the ancient Romans who gave the passage into a new year to Janus, the god of gateways, who…

January 3, 2013

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: Two Views

by Sean Fitzpatrick and Mitchell Kalpakgian

Sean Fitzpatrick: This novel has no motive, no moral, and no plot—at least you won’t catch me attempting to find any lest I be prosecuted, banished, or shot. But even without these traditional literary elements, it is a masterpiece. The…

December 24, 2012

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

by Sean Fitzpatrick

Christmastime is the homiest holiday: firesides, feasting, family… and fairy folk. The richest Christmas traditions concern down-to-earth things; which only makes sense as they celebrate the single greatest Down-To-Earth Thing: the Word made Flesh. This is precisely why it also…

December 17, 2012

Jane Austen’s Emma

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

What do matchmakers know that eludes the common man? What does the common man know that escapes the matchmakers? Austen’s novel shows that true romance originates from equality of social background and education, compatibility of temperaments, similarity of moral ideals…

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