John M. DeJak

Latest by John M. DeJak in Chronicles

• Reviews

  August 2020

  A Decadent Diagnosis

  In his most recent book, Ross Douthat analyzes our decadent society from several perspectives—cultural, political, and philosophical. He insists that decadence has interconnected economic, demographic, intellectual, and cultural factors.

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• Reviews

  June 2020

  A Skeptic on the Road of Saints

  Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Timothy Egan’s latest book chronicles his pilgrimage along the Via Francigena.

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• Reviews

  April/May 2020

  Books in Brief

  John DeJak reviews Václav Benda's The Long Night of the Watchman

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• Reviews

  March 2020

  Books in Brief

  Journalist Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media has been busy. From roughly around the time of the Charlottesville racial conflagration in 2017 to the filling of the inkwells that were used to print this book, O’Neil has covered various aspects of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its self-appointed role as arbiter of “hate” and what passes for “acceptability” in American society. Unfortunately, the book is an obvious clip job that compiles the author’s previously published articles and blog posts, replete with repetitions, non sequiturs, a few typos, and bumpy transitions.

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• Reviews

  January 2020

  Books in Brief

  Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America, by Mary Grabar (Regnery; 327 pp., $29.99). Mary Grabar has performed an invaluable service by taking the time to dissect Howard Zinn’s polemical attack on America, A People’s History of the United States (1980). Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age, by Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Diane Montagna (Angelico Press; 338 pp., $30.00). How are the Vatican’s Amazon Synod, a board meeting of GlaxoSmithKline, and a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee different?

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• Reviews

  January 2020

  The Making of the Midwest

  David McCullough’s latest offering, The Pioneers, takes the reader into that little-known period of American history in which the intrepid veterans of the Revolutionary War set out to settle the territories on the banks of the Ohio River. It was the first thrust of Westward expansion that would characterize the United States during the rest of the 19th century. McCullough’s chronicle considers the period 1787-1863, using journals, letters, and the histories told by the original pioneers of the Ohio Territory.

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• Reviews

  March 2016

  Timely, and Timeless

  “An essay is not an exercise in ‘thinking out loud.’ Rather, it is thinking while writing, or even perhaps the writing is, in its own way, our thinking things out.”

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• Reviews

  March 2015

  Defining Work

  This collection harkens back to a bygone era when the essay was a common medium of the literary artist.

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