The New Criterion

It operates as a refuge for a civilizing element in short supply in contemporary America: honest criticism
- The Wall Street Journal

Editor’s note

Welcome to the new website of The New Criterion!

 

We have just launched this new site. A few components are still being tested. Everything should be up and running in a week or so. Let us know what you think!

 

May 2008

Volume 26, Number 9

Notes & comments

Art & ethics at Yale

On the Aliza Shvarts affair.

Libel tourism

On "Free Speech in an Age of Jihad," the conference hosted by The New Criterion and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Features

Introduction: What was a liberal education?

by Roger Kimball

An introduction to our special issue on education.

On the sadness of higher education

by Alan Charles Kors

On comparing the university life then with now.

The world we have lost: a parable on the academy

by Robert L. Paquette

On the Alexander Hamilton Center affair at Hamilton College.

The new learning that failed

by Victor Davis Hanson

On the value of classical learning.

Liberalism vs. humanism

by James Piereson

On the battle between learning for the sake of learning and learning for utility.

The age of educational romanticism

by Charles Murray

On requiring every child to be above average.

thornton willis

May 2008

Volume 26, Number 9

Departments

Poems


Theater

Friends & neighbors

by Brooke Allen

On In the Heights at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, Almost an Evening at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street, Parlour Song at the Atlantic Theater, and The Four of Us at Manhattan Theatre Club.


Art

Courbet at the Met

by Karen Wilkin

On "Gustave Courbet" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Filippo in Florence

by Marco Grassi

On “Filippo Napoletano alla Corte di Cosimo II de’ Medici” at the Galleria Palatina in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

Gallery chronicle

by James Panero

On “John Dubrow: Paintings” at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, “Wayne Thiebaud: The Figure” at Allan Stone Gallery, “Gregory Crewdson” at Luhring Augustine, and “Lois Dodd: Landscapes and Structures, a Survey Exhibition” at Alexandre Gallery.


Music

New York chronicle

by Jay Nordlinger

On the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Daniel Gaisford at Bargemusic, the Berlin Philharmonic's Salzburg Easter Festival, Dmitri Hvorostovsky at Carnegie Hall, Julian Bliss at the Walter Reade Theater, and David Shifrin at the Rose Theater.

Concert note

by Ben Finane

On Alfred Brendel at Carnegie Hall.


The Media

Smear tactics

by James Bowman

On the proclivity to sling mud.


Notebook

Ionesco & the limits of philosophy

by Anthony Daniels

On Le roi se meurt by Eugène Ionesco and the philosophy of Owen Flanagan.

May 2008

Volume 26, Number 9

Books

The Times Great Victorian Lives: An Era in Obituaries (Times (Times Books))

With all due respect

on The Times Great Victorian Lives: An Era in Obituaries (Times (Times Books))

by Ian Brunskill

reviewed by John Gross

The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume XIII: A Vision: The Original 1925 Version (Collected Works of W B Yeats)

Communicators

on The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume XIII: A Vision: The Original 1925 Version (Collected Works of W B Yeats)

by William Butler Yeats,Catherine E. Paul,Margaret Mills Harper

reviewed by Denis Donoghue

Book title

Virgil up to speed

on The Aeneid

by Vergil,Sarah Ruden

reviewed by Richard Garner

Book title

Evil's supreme logic

on Detective Story

by Imre Kertesz,Tim Wilkinson

reviewed by Tess Lewis

Bookstore

go to bookstore

Subscriber login

The New Criterion

View Cover

Already a print subscriber? click for online access

Webcasts

John O’Sullivan on Poland and the Cold War, from an evening with the Friends of The New Criterion


Joseph Epstein on the future of small magazines, from an evening with the Friends of The New Criterion

Go to webcasts >

Events

June 04, 2008

OPEN EVENT: 2008 Bradley Symposium: Encounter at 10


October 22, 2008

GALA EVENT: The New Criterion Benefit Art Auction


January 25, 2009

TRAVEL EVENT: The New Criterion Cruise

More events >