Category: Great Books Project
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The Papacy: Leo III and Charlemagne (795-861)
With the arrival of the seventh century came a new religion that exploded out of Arabia. Within a handful of decades, the followers of the Prophet Mohammad managed to conquer Damascus, defeat the Byzantine Emperor Heraclitus, and claim the surrounding lands of Syria, Palestine, Persia, Afghanistan, and Egypt before venturing westward up North Africa, into […]
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The Papacy: Gregory the Great (590-604)
The future Gregory “The Great” descended from a rich and well-established Roman family (he was the great-great-grandson of Pope Felix III). Early into his career, Gregory was involved in civic life –he rose to the rank of Prefect of Rome. However, when his father died, Gregory’s life took a turn. He immediately began remodeling his […]
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In This Our Life: A Bleak Pulitzer Prize Winner
“Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,Your social order too!Where tarries he, the Power who said:See, I make things all new?” In This Our Life is a drab and dreary novel that suffers from a burdensome lack of inspiration or motivation. Mirroring the life of its depressive author Ellen Glasgow, In This Our Life […]
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On Rod Serling’s “The Mighty Casey”
Initially published in 1960 and republished courtesy of Anne Serling in a collection of her father’s short stories entitled Stories From The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s short story “The Mighty Casey” was the inspiration for the penultimate episode of Season 1 of The Twilight Zone. The story is a light-hearted, playful narrative which explores a […]
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Thoughts on Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale (1953)
Ian Fleming’s inaugural James Bond novel (Casino Royale, 1953) beautifully introduces us to the fictional town of Royale-les-Eaux located near the mouth of Somme along the French coast, where a lavish Casino sits. It is a vast opulent, victorian baroque edifice which has been tenderly restored to its former glory from the Belle Epoch. There […]
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The Papacy: Vigilius (537-555)
A mere fifteen years after the death of Leo the Great –the Bishop of Rome who saved the city from certain destruction at the hands of Attila the Hun– the Roman Empire in the West officially collapsed. Italy became a province which was battled over by the Byzantines in the East, and the Goths in […]
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