Patrick Reardon

George Hardin Brown, the noted Stanford University medievalist and expert on Bede the Venerable, died at the age of 90 in 2021.  He had spent his entire adult life studying [...]

In The Bible and Poetry, published last year, Michael Edwards warned against the temptation to paraphrase the Bible. An English-born French poet and scholar, Edwards noted that much of the [...]

Florence at the end of the fifteenth century could be a dangerous place to have religious opinions. Girolamo Savonarola, an ascetic Dominican friar, won great praise and power by preaching [...]

It is noteworthy that readers of What Maisie Knew by Henry James don’t get a look at Maisie for most of the 1897 novel. All of the action is seen [...]

The hardcover edition of Mike Dash’s 2002 Batavia’s Graveyard has no subtitle.  But, to attract potential buyers, these words are at the top of the dustjacket: THE TRUE STORY OF [...]

The best books of 2019 Moby Dick by Herman Melville Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt The [...]

Mostly Harmless — the 5th and sort-of final installment in the series of books by Douglas Adams that he started with A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — is mostly [...]

Emma, this book review is for you, but don’t tell your Mom and Dad.  They’d probably get all worried that a book like P is for Pterodactyl will ruin your [...]