When the world starts afresh
This essay originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune on December 30, 2013. The coming of the new year brings lots of parties. And it’s a time when many people sit [...]
Poem: “….ad altare Dei”
I offer the purple sash and the white surplice. I offer the cold mornings when snow crunched and the church was dark and silent and an old man came down [...]
Book review: “Michelangelo” by Stefanie Penck, translated by David Aston
There are hundreds of books about Michelangelo, many running to several hundred pages. I own several of them. Stefanie Penck’s Michelangelo, published in 2005 by Prestel, has only 95 pages [...]
Book review: “Tres Riches Heures: Behind the Gothic Masterpiece” by Lillian Schacherl, translated by Fiona Elliott
It would be difficult to think of a collection of artworks that could challenge the Tres Riches Heures in terms of sumptuous color and elegance. And all within a single [...]
Book Review: ” A Prayer Journal” by Flannery O’Connor
There is something breath-taking in the hopes, dreams and faith of young Flannery O’Connor. What I am asking for is really very ridiculous. Oh, Lord, I am saying, at present [...]
Book review: “Luca and Andrea della Robbia” (Masters in Art)
A century ago, Masters in Art was a series of monthly monographs offered for the annual subscription price of $1.50. Single copies were 15 cents. The Lucca and Andrea della [...]
Book review: “The Wife of Jesus” by Anthony Le Donne
Was Jesus breast-fed? That’s a question that Anthony Le Donne asks near the end of his reasonable and provocative new book The Wife of Jesus: Ancient Texts and Modern Scandals [...]
Saint Lincoln
It’s too bad, really, that Abraham Lincoln has been accorded sainthood. Not that we call him Saint Abe or put a halo around his image, but Americans do just about [...]
Book review: “Moon of Three Rings” by Andre Norton
Andre Norton’s Moon of Three Rings is one of her best books. That’s saying something since she wrote more than 200 novels of science fiction and, to a lesser extent, [...]
Book review: “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee was a difficult book for me to read, as I suspect it will be for most people. That’s not because it’s a [...]