Remembering Is Not Enough

Hilene Flanzbaum, The Americanization of the Holocaust The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 The following  note is from summer 1999 when I was reworking my dissertation to what would become my first book, Elie Wiesel…

A Call to Life and Deeds: Goethe’s Maxims

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections   Translated by Elisabeth Stopp; edited with an introduction and notes by Peter Hutchinson; Penguin Books, 1998 I’ve been reading Pierre Hadot’s 2008 book, N’oublie pas de vivre:…

Facing the Burden of History

Dorothee Sölle, The Arms Race Kills even without War This is a short collection of talks (rallies, radio programs) mostly given to German audiences in the days when West Germany still existed. The context for…

This Pilgrimage of the Heart

I first read the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time spring through autumn of 1997.  A couple of years later, I read the collection of Proust’s essays in On Art &…