Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus Thomas Cahill, Doubleday, 1999, 333 pages, $24.95 The Book of Revelation does not prophesy a plague of shoddy Gospel scholarship, but surely one has descended on us. Some works have been simply outrageous (Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son) and some … Read more
Even among fantasy devotees who recognize Tolkien as the father of the modern genre, few realize that Tolkien insisted that The Lord of the Rings is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” This probably comes as a surprise to most Catholics as well. Readers of The Lord of the Rings are unlikely to find … Read more
Great books have much to fear from blockbuster movies. And Peter Jackson’s new film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, set to be released in theaters next month, poses such a threat. Mesmerized by the cinematic eye-candy, the spin-off toys and games, and the fast-food tie-ins, fans who enter J.R.R. Tolkien’s world of Middle-earth … Read more
There’s a whiff of triumphalism in the air at the National Education Association’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Enemies of school-choice legislation believe they have their adversaries on the run. Discussions of a national voucher program were cut short early in the congressional budget battle this year, in part because voucher referenda in Michigan and California … Read more