ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month [of Sex] (September 2008): The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy
My friend Pagan Kennedy (the hip genius behind some ten books now) has a new book out today that’s an anthology of biographical essays about mostly-science-oriented maverick inventors and geniuses and the like […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selections of the Month (August 2008): American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent and Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking by D.Q. McInerny
Two months ago, I saw a reading by (and bought a book from) Benjamin Nugent, the author of American Nerd: The Story of My People. He […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (July 2008): Critical Review
This month’s Book Selection is actually the twentieth-anniversary volume of an ongoing political science journal, Critical Review, edited by more or less libertarian Barnard political science professor Jeffrey Friedman, aimed at forcing libertarian ideas to be tested against the latest academic political science insights, and perfect […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (June 2008): Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity by Charles Taylor
Not to be confused with the authoritarian former president of Liberia recently put on trial, this Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher sometimes considered a communitarian who, five years after Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (which […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (May 2008, Month of the Nerd): Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones
I won’t give anything away about this long-awaited seven-issue comic book miniseries written by a comics writer I blogged about on Tuesday and drawn by the artist of Wanted (which becomes a movie with Angelina Jolie […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (April 2008): Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh
After being an atheist for about two and a half decades, I have finally accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior — April Fool’s! Or rather, perennial fools, and by that I mean people […]
One other book-related note before we begin: my review of Matthew Parker’s Panama Fever, about the building of the Panama Canal, was in the Sunday New York Post (delayed from last week). As it happens, the next page had a review of a book about the 1950s Congressional hearings that were used to persecute […]
If all goes as planned, my New York Post review of Matthew Parker’s Panama Fever, about the building of the Canal, will be printed today, and it will eventually be linked right here regardless of when it appears (if it does). But also read below for something more Easter-appropriate, of which Buckley no doubt […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (Fourth of Four): The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The perfect long-flight read, this unusually “literary” sci-fi novel depicts the preparations for, initial success of, and harrowing denouement of a Jesuit-led space mission to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, where humanity makes first contact with aliens, and things don’t go […]
Don’t be fooled by my talk of Vegas into thinking that I am some libertine. Although I’ve been criticizing religion on epistemological grounds this month, I don’t much object to the ethos of self-discipline and sexual restraint it helps spread. (My position is thus the opposite of a lot of modern American critics of religion: […]
I decided to turn February into a “Month Without God” largely because four books dealing with God or godlessness all came my way at about the same time (the fact that I’ll also hear Father Richard Neuhaus of First Things magazine speak tomorrow and might even end up, for the first time in my life, […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (Third of Four): “The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Blood-Curdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre”
Lovecraft, despite writing of all sorts of eldritch, supernatural monstrosities from other, dark dimensions that drive men mad and haunt their nightmares with visions of terrible power (indeed, despite being the Poe-influenced inspiration for half […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (Two of Four), February 2008: The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens by Vox Day
Vox Day (Christian, conservative columnist, videogame designer, electronica composer) is in agreement with me on one thing, and that is that in some sense there isn’t much to say about […]
Tomorrow I hope to post my review of The Irrational Atheist, a book that responds to the recent wave of “New Atheist” arguments from people like Michel Onfray (whose Atheist Manifesto I reviewed yesterday) and Christopher Hitchens (who I’ve seen debate twice in recent months). Today, though, a review, as it were, of the […]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (First of Four), February 2008: Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto
Religious people have no evidence whatsoever to point to in support of their beliefs (the distinctly supernatural ones, that is, as opposed to some affiliated historical claims that are no different from the ones secular people would make). Often, then, […]
