Taking Aristophanes Seriously
The original gross-out comic.
Articles by Algis Valiunas
Sickness of the Mind, Triumph of the Soul
Dostoevsky at the pinnacle of modern literature.
American Pragmatist
William James and the modern sensibility.
In Plague Time
Reading of pandemics past.
The Mind of the Moralist
Samuel Johnson, first among equals.
Everlasting Youth
The callow genius of Percy Bysse Shelley.
Battle for a Continent
Francis Parkman’s politically incorrect history.
The Fellowship of the Cursed Poets
Misery loves company.
The Tragic Sense
What Joseph Conrad knew.
Martin Luther’s Reformation
The first Protestant.
Master Builder
Frank Lloyd Wright at 150.
Between Heaven and Hell
Navigating Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Edisonian Democracy
Thomas Alva Edison and the American way of life.
Voice of Civilization
Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
A Historian’s Craft
The passion and dispassion of Jacob Burckhardt.
The Philistine on Parnassus
Why we haven't outgrown Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Full Bloom
Allan Bloom and the state of the American mind.
Orwell in the Orwellian Century
Even "the crystal spirit" had his The surest sign that a writer has made his mark is the adoption of his surname in common parlance as an adjective immediately significant even to those who barely know his work, or merely know of it.
On the Slaughter Bench of History
Remembering the Great War after 100 years
Bach the Transcendent
Truth and eternal harmonies.
Wagner High and Low
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was in his own day, and remains on the bicentennial of his birth, the operatic composer most important to philosophers, literary men, honest-to-goodness intellectuals, and the usual assortment of those impressed above al
Wagner High and Low
Appalling ideas set to beautiful music.
History as Literature
W.H. Prescott's grand account of the bloody Spanish Empire.
High Adventure and Sacred Mystery
In literature and in public life, Mark Helprin’s is an indispensable voice.
Godlike, Godly Tolstoy
Each unhappy genius is unhappy in his own way.
Winged Words
Reading the Iliad in English.
Left, Right, and Dickens
He was a conservative liberal and a liberal conservative.
King of Pain
Novelist David Foster Wallace shows how to recover one’s soul.
De Luxe
A review of Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America's Gilded Age, by Mosette Broderick
At the Zoo
A review of H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: The Complete Series (Library of America), by H.L. Mencken, edited by Marion Rogers
Washington Square
Harvey C. Mansfield discusses Henry James's "Washington Square".
Shall We Fight for King and Country?
Once again, the contrast between Churchill and Bloomsbury matters.
Highborn Fools
Reviewing the memoirs of Duc de Saint-Simon, courtier at Louis XIV's Versailles.
The Critic Who Sometimes Exists
Edmund Wilson remains the finest critic American literature has produced; we can only hope for a better.
Aryan Sister
The life of Leni Riefenstahl, the Third Reich's great documentary filmmaker.
Encountering Islam
Western travelers in the Muslim world.
Philosophy in Democratic Times
The mental keenness and literary grace of George Santayana.
Democracy’s Composer
How Beethoven harmonized democracy and genius.
