With Both Hands

Sign in Subscribe

The Long View

The Long View: The Holy Grail

A nice overview of the grail stories, and how they fit into European history. This was part of my background reading for Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark and Last Call. The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief By Richard Barber Harvard University Press, 2004 463 Pages, US$17.

The Long View: Many Dimensions

Not for the first time, I feel like Charles Williams was a prototype for Tim Powers. Many Dimensions By Charles Williams First Publication 1931 Reprint by William B. Eerdmans, 1993 Approx. US$10, 269 Pages ISBN 0-8028-1221-X There is a trinity of noted 20th century British authors who wrote fantasy

The Long View: Inventing the Middle Ages

Looking up images for this post, I was taken with portraits of Frederick the Great. The man's gaze pierces you even at the distance of 230 years. He isn't the subject of the book in this post, but I couldn't resist! Inventing the Middle

The Long View 2005-05-30: The People Have Spoken. The Bastards.

The EU really is a remarkable experiment. Not everything has gone well, but a lot has, and that is worth remembering. The People Have Spoken. The Bastards. We should not blame the Belgians. It is true that the proposed European Constitution begins with the phrase, "His Majesty the King

The Long View 2005-05-26: High-Powered Jobs, Then Mostly British Stuff

Work-life balance is important, particularly insofar as a lack of it contributes to lower fertility in precisely the people who should be having more kids. However, the problem is that you can't make a job with time off for raising kids equal to a job with brutal hours

The Long View 2005-05-24: Manicheanism & World Order

Ed West noted recently that progressives have been becoming more and more globalist as times goes on, since this is seen as nationalism, the root of all evil. I call it globalism instead of pro-empire, because the the Empire is a socially conservative place, but I know what Ed means.

The Long View: A History of the American People

I've never been able to read A History of the American People. I've tried twice, but something about Johnson's style makes his books unreadable to me. I want to read his books, if only because he covers topics that interest me. Maybe it is