How Reading Great Literature Helps Protect You From Big Brother’s Thought Control
The turn language is taking in politics calls to mind that controlling language to control thought was a prime goal of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’
Schools Ban Classic Novels As Much For Laziness And Ignorance As Politics
Removing time-tested classics and assigning easy fiction with leftist themes fails in cultivating any love of reading in the students that need it most.
Christopher Tolkien Was The Unsung Hero Of Middle Earth
The son of J.R.R. Tolkien did far more than just compile and edit his father’s unfinished stories. He helped create the world of Middle Earth.
Why Greta Gerwig’s ‘Little Women’ Is A Huge Letdown
‘Little Women’ is so important and transcends each generation because it captures the differences between women — in personalities, desires, and fortunes. Greta Gerwig’s rendition didn’t quite cut it.
Will The New ‘Little Women’ Make Jo March Into A Man-Hating Feminist?
Only showcasing a feminism that denies a desire for authentic human love feels incomplete to most women. Jo doesn’t have to choose between writing and love.
Bret Stephens Touts Willa Cather As ‘Perfect Antidote’ To Trump. NYT Readers Shred Them Both
Dozens of leftist readers wrote to accuse Willa Cather of anti-Semitism, nativist bias, white-washing Indian genocide, and other crimes against humanity.
No, Shakespeare Was Not A Jewish Woman, He Was Just A Genius
A new and novel theory about who wrote Shakespeare’s plays has emerged. But, as usual, it tells us more about the theorists than it does about Shakespeare.
Make 2019 The Year You Read ‘The Iliad’ With Your Kids
There are many reasons you should push this amazing text to the top of your family reading list in 2019.
Netflix’s ‘Watership Down’ Miniseries Is Worth Watching, Even For Kids
‘Watership Down’ is both a deeply, fantastically imagined mythology, and an epic adventure story full of thrills and hair-breadth escapes whose appeal to all ages will never stale.
‘Les Miserables’ Reveals The Only Vision Of Change That Can Ever Hope To Succeed
‘Les Mis’ shows us a world resembling our own: a society filled with wealth, but rife with injustice. The play offers us hope for change in the form of two young revolutionaries.
How Mark Twain Created The Great American Hero
In ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ Mark Twain creates a heroic archetype that is uniquely American.
How Mark Twain Championed Self-Government Through Humor And Realism
Mark Twain rejected the simplistic, good-guys-always-win type of Sunday school stories with overtly moral themes that he was raised on.
Why Studying Mark Twain Is Essential To Understanding America Today
‘The young love hardly anything better than to laugh. And if they do love something more than that, they love to learn more than that. If you read Mark Twain, you get to do both at the same time.’
Why We Need Poetry And Literature To Teach Us Practical Philosophy
On this episode of the Federalist Radio Hour, Ben Domenech and Matthew Mehan discuss young adult literature, Harry Potter, and high lessons in popular art.
Why ‘Mansfield Park’ Was Jane Austen’s Best Novel
Modern readers aren’t quite as interested in a tale where virtue is rewarded and vice punished, but it’s her best regardless.
Jane Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’ Illustrates Why Manners Matter
Jane Austen finds value in the social conventions of her day throughout the pages of ‘Northanger Abbey,’ because manners do matter.
How Jane Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’ Reveals Her Satirical Genius
Reading ‘Northanger Abbey’ is essential to understanding Jane Austen’s use of satire throughout the entire canon of her books.
GQ Discredits Whatever Intellect Its Writers Have With Advice To Ignore The Bible
Given that this is the reasoning a seventh grader uses to resist summer reading, the advice casts the maturity of the GQ editors in a dim light.
What An Ancient Greek Play About Lies Has To Say To Contemporary Politics
Within his ancient play ‘The Clouds,’ Aristophanes examines two particular kinds of speech, just and unjust speech, and their timeless conflict.
Reading Jules Verne This Summer Could Introduce Children To Endless Worlds Of Adventure
As vacation begins, decades of K-12 education research tells us that summertime is when the academic paths of higher- and lower-performing students most radically diverge.