‘A Letter to the New Atheists’, by ‘The Great Agnostic’ author Susan Jacoby
During the Gilded Age, which saw the dawn of America’s enduring culture wars, Robert Green Ingersoll was known as The Great Agnostic. The nation’s most famous orator, he raised his voice on behalf of Enlightenment reason, secularism, and the separation of church and state with a vigour unmatched since America’s revolutionary generation. When he died … Read more
The Mechanical Smile: Modernism and the First Fashion Shows in France and America
In the early 20th century, the desire to see clothing in motion flourished on both sides of the Atlantic: models tangoed, slithered, swaggered, and undulated before customers in couture houses and department stores. The Mechanical Smile traces the history of the earliest fashion shows in France and the United States from their origins in the … Read more
‘How to Read Literature’ by Terry Eagleton. Understanding Openings and ‘A Passage to India’
What makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be full of concealed loathing, resentment, and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. How to Read Literature is … Read more
Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire, 1840-1870
The Gothic Revival movement in architecture was intimately entwined with eighteenth and nineteenth century British cultural politics. By the middle of the nineteenth century, architects and theorists had transformed the movement into a serious scholarly endeavour, connecting it to notions of propriety and ‘truth’, particularly in the domain of religious architecture. Simultaneously, reform within the … Read more
The newest volume in the Pevsner Buildings of Ireland series: South Ulster, the Counties of Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan
The South Ulster volume of the Buildings of Ireland covers the inland counties of Cavan, Monaghan and Armagh, an area stretching from the thinly populated uplands around the Cuilcagh Mountains and the cradle of the Shannon to the fertile Blackwater Valley and the southern shores of Lough Neagh. The architecture of the region is as … Read more
