When I was 12, a Christmas present (selected by my mother) started a lifelong interest. It was a book, published by Horizon Magazine, entitled Russia Under the Czars. It was lavishly illustrated and well-written, and I was hooked (for life) by a history so unlike my own. Sixty years later, that book still sits on my bookshelf. I took another look through it when I read Gary Saul Morson’s “Narratives of Russian history: On Vladimir Putin’s Historical Claims” in New Criterion Magazine; it turns out my old book is still rather up-to-date.
Speaking of Russians, the Russian émigré tradition is alive and well. Amid all the news of the exchange of political prisoners between Russia and the United States, I happened across a story in The Hudson Review. It’s from a memoir by Victor Brombert, in which he recounts listening to his grandmother recite Russian poetry during the late Weimar Republic in Germany. See “Sofa Sessions with Babushka.”
Casey McCall ay Remembrance of Former Days has some good advice for this election year. His message is aimed at Christians, but it applies to all of us: Watch your hearts.
More Good Reads
Life and Culture
Learn This Term: ‘Whole of Society’ – Jacob Siegel at Tablet Magazine.
Faith
Bamboo Resilience: Christianity’s Explosive Growth in China – Joann Pitman at Desiring God.
Why Churches Are Departing From Biblical Truth Once Delivered – Jack Wellman at What Christians Want to Know.
Writing and Literature
‘A beacon of brazenness and defiance’: Edna O’Brien remembered by Anne Enright, Colm Toibin and more – The Guardian.
BTW, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House is a Murder Mystery – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.
Here’s a Simple Solution to the Pessimism Culture. Read a Book – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.
American Stuff
Commander-in-Chief at Civil War: Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis – Kyle Hallowell at Emerging Civil War.
Whiskey Rebellion: The Fiery Revolt That Tested America’s Young Republic – Jason Clark at This is the Day.
Poetry
“La Figlia che Piange,” poem by T.S. Eliot – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
A Thousand Miles, and a Poem – Seth Lewis.
Haiku Competition 2024 – Society of Classical Poets.
Floating – Paul Wittenberger.
The Old Wild Place – David Whyte.
Privateers, Poetry and Golden Prizes – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.
Israel
Two Assassinations and a Transformed War – Jonathan Schanzer at The Free Press.
British Stuff
George Cruikshank’s London Summer – Spitalfields Life.
Red Poppy Fields – Paul Cardall
Painting: Old Man Reading Book, oil on canvas by Ernst Agerbeek (1903-1946).
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