July 2014 archive

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I by Edward Gibbon

Although decline is the theme of this massive work, the Roman military machine shows itself still quite capable of defeating its enemies when competently led, and there is no shortage of outstanding emperors in this period. Special praise is reserved for Constantine, the great Christianizer and victorious general, and surprisingly, his antithesis, Julian the pagan …

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The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

It’s hard to say why I liked this book; nothing much happened in it, yet it was a delight to read. For a writer of horror, King has a real knack for getting inside the mind of a child; perhaps it was the childish imagination of a young girl lost in the woods that I …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/07/27/the-girl-who-loved-tom-gordon-by-stephen-king/

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

Fascinating, insightful book. Ferguson argues that not only is Western Civilization the greatest civilization in the history of the world, but that it has no need to apologize for itself, a view that may seem obvious to some but that has come under attack in recent years. He argues that the West developed five “killer …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/07/19/civilization-the-west-and-the-rest-by-niall-ferguson/

Politics by Aristotle

Aristotle’s politics strike me as rather conservative. He believes some democracy is good, but not too much. The lower classes should be kept firmly in their place, and the upper classes should not have their property rights disturbed. He emphatically does not believe that all men are equal. He believes that education should be a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/07/12/politics-by-aristotle/