Free Republic

A few years ago, Robert Reilly wrote a book that may offer the key to understanding the advance of Islamic terror against the West: The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis. At the heart of Reilly’s book is his argument that the “denigration of dialogue is due to the demotion of reason that took place in the ninth-century struggle between the rationalist theologians, the Mu’tazilites and their anti-rationalist theologians, the Ash’arites. Unfortunately, for those who prefer dialogue, the Ash’arites won.” “The Ash’arites’ position was that reason is so infected by men’s self-interest...

Apple's iBooks platform is seeing an average of a million new users per week after the company's decision to ship iOS 8 with the app pre-installed, according to Apple Director of iBooks Keith Moerer, who spoke today at the Digital Book World Conference. efore iOS 8, the iBooks app had to be searched for and downloaded from the App Store, putting it on par with several other App Store-based e-books apps like Amazon's Kindle app for iOS. Pre-installing iBooks made it "so easy" for new users to try iBooks for the first time, said Moerer. Family Sharing, also new in...

Author’s Note: If you’re wondering why this column begins with “#4” just go to my archive. This is Part II of a series. Part I described a new College Prep Course that is being offered by www.CrossExamined.org. Frank Turek, J. Warner Wallace, and I will be traveling the country offering the course starting in the summer of 2015. This column series provides an overview of my 10-step plan to help Christian kids prepare for life in college. 4. Google Is Not a Friend to Higher Ed. Some readers may remember my infamous “letter to Ed” that went viral on the...

At the start of WWII millions of men showed up at registration offices to take low-level academic tests before being inducted.1 The years of maximum mobilization were 1942 to1944; the fighting force had been mostly schooled in the 1930s, both those inducted and those turned away. Of the 18 million men were tested, 17,280,000 of them were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier, a 96 percent literacy rate. Although this was a 2 percent fall-off from the 98 percent rate among voluntary military applicants ten years earlier, the dip was so small it...

Oxford University Press Bans Use Of Pig, Sausage Or Pork-Related Words To Avoid Offending Muslims 14 Jan 2015 The Oxford University Press has warned its writers not to mention pigs, sausages or pork-related words in children's books, in an apparent bid to avoid offending Jews and Muslims. The existence of the publisher's guidelines emerged after a radio discussion on free speech in the wake of the Paris attacks. Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, presenter Jim Naughtie said: "I've got a letter here that was sent out by OUP to an author doing something for young people. "Among the things...

More abject surrender and dhimmitude from Ludicrous Britannia. OUP says they are avoiding mentioning pork and pigs in books to avoid offending Muslims and Jews, but Jews have never taken offense at such things — it was only in Saudi Arabia, for example, that censors covered over a pig character in a children’s book with a big black marker. “Oxford University Press bans mention of pork and pigs in books to ‘avoid offending Muslims or Jews,'” by Ewan Palmer, International Business Times, January 14, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann): "One of the biggest education publishers in the world has warned its...

Laura Ingalls Wilder is legendary. Her "Little House on the Prairie" series, based on her family's adventures on the Midwestern frontier, have sold more than 41 million copies in the U.S. and have been translated into more than 40 languages. The books spawned a long-running television show and, in 2008, a stage musical. Millions of readers have been captivated by Wilder's childhood on the prairie, but her newest book, "Pioneer Girl," released more than 50 years after her death, offers a new perspective. Annotated with exceptional detail by Pamela Smith Hill, "Pioneer Girl" is Wilder's autobiography, unpublished until now. Hill's...

Michel Houellebecq, who first stirred controversy with sex novel Atomised, makes waves with book describing country after Islamist becomes president. Put France’s literary enfant terrible together with Europe’s most combustible political talking point, and sparks were always going to fly. Michel Houellebecq, whose tale of sex, mother-hatred and cloning Atomised was the French literary scandal of the Nineties, is turning his attention to “Islamisation”. His new novel Soumission (Submission), will not be published until January 7 but has already triggered a flurry of accusations that he is pandering to the growing Islamophobia gripping France. It is set in 2022 and...

The late Philip K. Dick, born 86 years ago today in Chicago, is something of a cautionary figure in American literature: brilliant, prolific, often sloppy, and woefully underappreciated during his lifetime. It was only with the 1982 release of the film "Blade Runner" (loosely based on his 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") that Dick's work truly began to saturate the mainstream; by that point, he had been dead for four months. In the ensuing three decades, Dick's novels and stories have served as fodder for dozens of Hollywood movies; they have been reissued again and again. In...

This year, Christmas shopping may be an especially welcome respite from the ugly events going on across the country, as mobs take to the streets because grand juries that examined evidence reached different conclusions from those reached by mobs who made up their minds without examining that evidence. Perhaps more than in other years, shopping malls can become shopping mauls. One of the ways to make Christmas shopping less stressful is to give books as presents — after ordering them on the Internet. There is a good crop of new books to choose from this year, as well as some...

Consistent with our analysis of last year’s list, the New York Times has again apparently excluded any conservative or even right-leaning titles from its “100 Notable Books” of 2014. A disclaimer: While “conservative” or “right-leaning” are obviously subjective terms, a cursory glance at the Times’ list indicates books that lack a focus on individual liberty, free enterprise, traditional values, or many of the other tenets of Western civilization — unless critical of such tenets; further, the list is bereft of any titles authored by conservative or right-leaning authors. To give you a sense as to the kind of narratives/themes echoed...

I'm well into my 70s and checking off an item on my bucket list is finally getting around to reading Ulysses by James Joyce. It was never assigned reading in high school or college (I went to a Christian school, which may be one of the reasons). So, at my advanced age, I'm attempting at long last to tackle this work.I have a long attention span and am not easily bored nor discouraged. I've read long, involved books and have found most of them gripping, such as The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Faust by Goethe and Crime and Punishment...

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas, Rush and Kathryn Limbaugh, for returning to America’s children, parents and grandparents the best gift of them all--pride in America’s noble history! Not since Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has a figure from childlore done so much to lead the little people out of the fog. We look for Rudolph every Christmas, before packing him away with the ornaments til’ the next holiday season. But ‘Liberty’, the lovable, time-traveling horse of the ‘Rush Revere Adventures’ series is there every day. Liberty is not just the equine hero who makes going to bed a delight before lights...

The 19th Century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote about characters who justified murder in the name of their ideological beliefs. For this reason, John Gray argues, he's remained relevant ever since, through the rise of the totalitarian states of the 20th Century, to the "war against terror". When Fyodor Dostoyevsky described in his novels how ideas have the power to change human lives, he knew something of what he was writing about. Born in 1821, the Russian writer was in his 20s when he joined a circle of radical intellectuals in St Petersburg who were entranced by French utopian socialist...

On April 30, 1995, William S. Lind published an op ed in The Washington Post that foresaw a future breakup of the United States, driven by multiculturalism. The piece described not only America’s second civil war, but also a recovery of our traditional, Western, Christian culture. That cultural and moral recovery was led by a new country located in the northeast, which named itself Victoria because it had returned to Victorian values. Mr. Lind’s op ed has since been turned into a book, Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War, by “Thomas Hobbes,” the well-known theorist of the state and...

By the time John Kennedy Toole won the Pulitzer Prize for his great American novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, he had been dead for 12 years. Toole reportedly killed himself in part due to years of frustration over unsuccessful attempts to get his outrageously funny book about New Orleans published. It was only after his mother browbeat author Walker Percy into taking up the cause that Louisiana State University Press published the book in 1980. The following year, it won the Pulitzer for fiction. It went from being considered a cult classic to a must-read: More than 1.5 million copies...

Mark Crutcher, head of Life Dynamics, wrote a well researched and powerful book called Lime 5: Exploited by Choice.The book compiles stories of abortion complications and deaths. Crutcher draws material from court records, published sources, and firsthand accounts. Often, stories of abortion malpractice are hidden because abortion related injuries and deaths very rarely make the news. There is generally no legal requirement for clinics to report complications; doing so is voluntary. And since drawing attention to botched abortions is not in the clinics’ best interests, there is very little motivation for clinics to report their mistakes to the CDC. Women...

My Dragonfly And Me If I could be a Dragon Fly and wing my way through the sky I would never be shy just me and my Dragon Fly! By moonlight we ride the wind chase the comets tail for fun by day we would hide from the sun our fragile wings would come undone On darkest nights we would use fireflies as our guide we would dip and we would glide through the heavens open wide and scatter diamonds in the night sky my Dragon Fly and me... And we would wing past our lovers silent in the...

Are you looking for a spellbinding novel with deeply Catholic themes, compelling characters, and exquisite prose? Well, if you’ve been confining your search to Barnes and Noble’s family-friendly Christian fiction shelf, I’m here to tell you that you’re missing out. As a reader, you have probably heard of Dean Koontz. He has sold 450 million copies of his books in 38 languages, making him one of the most successful writers in the world. And while his stories have been categorized as science fiction, fantasy, thriller, and horror, he’s also considered by many readers to be the world’s best Catholic author...

Cuomo Sells 945 Copies of Book; Paid Over $700,000 Advance BY DANIEL HALPER Andrew Cuomo's book is a dud. The memoir, released last week, has sold 945 hardcover copies in its first week of sales, Amy Chozick of the New York Times reports. "Andrew Cuomo's memoir sold 945 hardcovers in first week on shelves, according to BookScan. That's right, guys, 945 copies," writes Chozick on Twitter.

Francis Fukuyama picked an auspicious publication date for his latest book, "Political Order and Political Decay." The news is full of stories of political decay: the Centers for Disease Control and Ebola; the Department of Veterans Affairs' health service; the Internal Revenue Service political targeting. Europe gives us the dysfunctional euro and no-growth welfare states. Not to mention failed states in the Middle East and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Critics have lambasted Fukuyama for proclaiming, in the title of his 1992 book, "The End of History." That's not entirely fair. His argument there was that the battle of ideas...

. 2014-09-26 America's Required Reading List for 2014 -- War against Islamic Jihad ... Gift Suggestions for Your Family, Children and Friends ... ===================================================== The Arab Mind (Amazon link) ==================================================== Sharia Law for Non-Muslims (A Taste of Islam) (Amazon link) ==================================================== The Hadith -- The Sunna of Mohmammed (Amazon link) ==================================================== The Life of Mohammed (A Taste of Islam) (Amazon link) ==================================================== Factual Persuasion of Islamics (Amazon link) ==================================================== A Simple Koran: Readable and Understandable (Amazon link) ==================================================== The Political Traditions of Mohammed: The Hadith for the Unbelievers (Amazon link) ==================================================== Mohammed And the Unbelievers : A Political Life (Amazon...

Attorney, author and columnist David Limbaugh is a man after my own heart. He’s also a man after my own mind. That is to say, as both a fellow member of the bar and follower of Christ, I tremendously appreciate how David approaches the hot button issues of the day. He carefully probes them within the framework of an objective, lawyerly and evidential analysis. He is a master communicator and never fails, in any case, to deliver deeply persuasive closing arguments in the court of public opinion. With his latest book, “Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of...

If you live in New York you may have heard of him, but outside the area his name may be a mystery. Robert Caro, famed author of four books on Lyndon Johnson, wrote his first book about him for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. The book was later named one of the one hundred greatest non-fiction books of the 20th century. The man is Robert Moses and the book is The Power Broker. The book was written in 1974 (celebrating its 40th anniversary.) I have owned it for about ten years and finally tackled it on my recent vacation....

When a witness for the prosecution provides the testimony that affirms the innocence of the defendant—when a witness is turned—there can be no more dramatic and powerful exoneration for the accused. And amongst the many gifts that David Limbaugh brings to bring to his latest best-selling book, Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel, it is Limbaugh’s gift of disbelief, his prior agnosticism toward “the God of the Bible,” that provides the gripping testimony necessary to turn an ordinary apologetics book into an extraordinary defense of, not just the Bible, but of belief in general. What...

In my new book, "Jesus on Trial," I explain how the Bible itself serves as its own apologetic. Holy Scripture, if we'll give it a chance, can bring us to faith. So one of the main goals I have with my book is to encourage people to crack open this amazing book and give it a chance to work in their lives. They may be surprised. "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). "From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in...

Anyone who knows what anxiety, and sometimes anguish, parents go through when they have a child who is still not talking at age two, three or even four, can appreciate what a blessing it can be to have someone who can tell them what to do — and what not to do. That someone is Professor Stephen Camarata of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, whose recently published book, "Late-Talking Children" gives parents information and advice that they are not likely to find anywhere else. And it does so in plain English. Professor Camarata has been researching, diagnosing and treating children...

Happy National Read a Book Day! Celebrate with these essential sci-fi classics. Space, dystopian futures, robots, technology, aliens . . . what is there not to love about science fiction, a genre that stretches the imagination and offers a glimpse into what lies in a galaxy and time far, far away? Now that you've indulged on the most compelling, classic epic fantasy series, it's time to switch gears. Onward, futurists! We recruited our own POPSUGAR editors to help compile the ultimate list of geeky reads. And this week, we're showcasing the best sci-fi narratives, with all the traditional elements of...

Since the adulterated version of the "There are No Spies" by Bill Granger is being released Thursday as movie with Pierce Brosnan and the very attractive Olga Kurylenko , the republishing of the November Man series in paperback has become available through eBooks on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I have started to read "There are No Spies". It is a combination of Ian Fleming and Donald Hamilton. It is closer to tone and tenor to Donald Hamilton. The movie is getting beaten up pretty badly. It is a shamed because I really thought Brosnan did a decent job as...

Full gallery at Reaganite Republican...

. 2014-08-24 2014 Christmas Gift List Suggestions for Your Family, Children and Friends ... ===================================================== Churchill -- The River War (Amazon link) ==================================================== The Arab Mind (Amazon link) ==================================================== Sharia Law for Non-Muslims (A Taste of Islam) (Amazon link) ==================================================== The Hadith -- The Sunna of Mohmammed (Amazon link) ==================================================== The Life of Mohammed (A Taste of Islam) (Amazon link) ==================================================== Factual Persuasion of Islamics (Amazon link) ==================================================== A Simple Koran: Readable and Understandable (Amazon link) ==================================================== The Political Traditions of Mohammed: The Hadith for the Unbelievers (Amazon link) ==================================================== Mohammed And the Unbelievers : A Political Life (Amazon link)...

Maybe it's the fact that both my parents were teachers when I was growing up, or that I was a studious, serious child, but I've always loved going back to school in the fall. My mother was a high school math teacher, and my father taught at West Georgia College, now called the University of West Georgia. Going back to school meant a chance to start over, to get organized, to get into a routine and to create a plan to be successful in the year ahead. My earliest memory of school is being dropped off in front of Carrollton...

For decades, The Tonight Show has served as a barometer for the country. Johnny Carson’s monologue was used to skewer politicians and celebrities every night. Appearing on The Tonight Show was the pinnacle of national celebrity. When Jay Leno succeeded Carson in 1992, he not only had big shoes to fill, but also had increased competition that Carson never faced. While David Letterman, the host of Late Night left NBC for CBS after being denied The Tonight Show position, other talk show hosts like Arsenio Hall hit the airwaves. Dave Berg, one of Leno’s top producers, chronicles this transition and...

Book Publishing Needs Socialism to Save It Let me just state up front that I love America and wouldn’t live anywhere else but, I also believe there’s room for a blend of socialism and capitalism to exist in a democratic society, and when it comes to how books are sold or treated, I prefer what the French and other advanced nations do. They protect books and the printed word. I applaud them—and so should you. Here in the U.S., thanks largely to Amazon, books have become commoditized. You can buy clothes based on price—or a desk or the hotel you...

Hillary Clinton’s $35 doorstop of a memoir is a flop. It was a best-seller to hard-core Democrats, but her advance is estimated at $14 million, which means Simon & Schuster is taking a bath in the hopes of a publishing a future president. Worse yet, The Washington Post reported that according to an Amazon.com measurement of which electronic books are most-read, Clinton’s book came in dead last among recent political books. Every time people highlight something in a book on their Kindles, Amazon records that data. By that measure, most readers barely started it. “The deepest into ‘Hard Choices’ the...

Thanks to Reformation Trust, Ligonier Ministries is giving away a church prize pack that consists of 200 copies of R.C. Sproul’s latest book, Everyone’s a Theologian. This prize pack will be shipped to a church of the winner’s choice located within the United States of America or Canada. In addition to the church prize pack, ten other winners will receive a single copy of Everyone’s a Theologian. “Everyone’s a Theologian is anything but a dry discussion of minute points of doctrine. R.C. Sproul, demonstrating his trademark ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, surveys the basic truths of the...

This is nothing more or less than a complete vanity. My sixth book is out today and I am thrilled with it. I started my journey as a self-published writer just over two years ago and look forward to doing this as a career for the next few decades. My latest novel is called 'EMP': In a flash of searing light, the world changed. A massive solar flare has crippled the modern world and brought chaos and destruction. David Hartsman is stuck in the remote farm town of his youth on what was expected to be a short visit to...

Miss Rutherford lived during a time when people were closer and the pace was slower! “Miss Rutherford writes often about the Confederacy, and Southern traditions, and was overall a champion of all things Southern. While her writings may not be politically correct in today’s world, they are an important look into her era and document views and events from someone who lived through them and knew people who did.”---Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr., Genealogy Columnist, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

In recognition of Bastille Day, I, in this special Monday episode, discuss "the book that caused the French Revolution": Les Liaisons Dangereuses (The Dangerous Liaisons), written by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. The book -- perhaps somewhat unintentionally -- set off pious sentiment against the Ancien Regime, and its influence carries on today. WATCH ON YOUTUBE(Alternative link, via Vimeo.) Summary:I start off the show with a brief primer on Bastille Day and immediately begin a summary of the characters and events in this novel, breaking down its story of lust and love. I then cite some of its distinctively Catholic elements....

Do we conservatives really mean it when we say that we need to promote our ideas in the popular culture through books, movies and other media? If so, we need to support people like Dinesh D'Souza and his latest movie and book, "America: Imagine the World Without Her." I saw the movie, and I loved it. Dinesh is a passionate patriot who "chose this country" and loves it with every fiber of his being. Like many of the rest of us, he recognizes that America is under assault, and he is doing all he can to save it. In...

It's the cultural crime we don't dare admit - starting that big, high-brow book with the best intentions before leaving it half-read down the back of the sofa. So those who give up on tough reads will be relieved to hear they're not alone. A mathematics professor has singled out which books are our most 'unread' - and intellectual big-hitters are far and away the worst culprits. Readers in their droves gave up on Hillary Clinton's memoirs, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century before they were even a tenth of the...

While parents of public school children may feel besieged by alternative lifestyles, one public school teacher doesn’t think the literature available to them is diverse enough. “It takes a lot of work to find books that include same-gender parents, step-parents, foster or adoptive children, or other nontraditional families as background in an adventure tale, a friendship parable, or a holiday romp; nontraditional families are either the topic of the story or, more likely, not included at all,” Willow McCormick writes in the summer issue of Rethinking Schools magazine. “When two-parent, heterosexual families are presented as the norm in story after...

What are you reading? There used to be a quarterly "What are you reading?" thread, but I haven't seen it for a long time. I got a lot of good book suggestions that way, and I miss it. So here's a thread! If you're reading something interesting you think others would like, or something boring you'd recommend we all avoid, jump in! If you have a ping list of FReepers who might be interested, ping them!

I am working on a project to collect as many books as possible for a new library that opened on May 21 in Tuttle, Oklahoma. Tuttle is a tiny town of about 6,000 people west of OKC. This library is operated and funded by volunteers. To my knowledge, they receive no public funding.The volunteers have worked incredibly hard to raise money for their location, books, and services. If you're an author, or know of one, this would be a great way to get your book(s) on library shelves. Tuttle Public Library 305 W Main Street Tuttle, OK 73089 http://www.tuttlelibrary.org/ I...

As she exited her Hard Choices book event Tuesday in Washington, D.C., former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was approached by conservative activist Jason Mattera, who asked her to sign a copy of the book out to one of the four Americans who perished in the 2012 Benghazi attack. “If you could make it out to Christopher Stevens,” Mattera asked, referring to the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who was a victim of the terrorist siege. “I think you knew him.” After a brief pause, Clinton responded, “Yeah, I’m not going to make it out to Chris Stevens.” “What difference does...

...Muslim Movements to Christ Something is happening in the Muslim world, something unprecedented in history. Over the past 14 centuries, Islam has forged a ‘spiritual empire’ that stretches from West Africa to Indonesia. Today, the Dar al-Islam or “House of Islam,” as Muslims call their religious community, counts more than one in five persons on earth.

Thomas Woods' book titled HOW THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILD WESTERN CIVILIZATION is an unanswerable antidote to anti-Catholic bashers and their mindless sychophants. Prof. Woods provides a compelling case that Western Civilization could not have thrived without the valuable achievements of the Catholic Church over the past 2,000 years. Prof. Woods survey of the Catholic Church in late Ancient History and during the Dark Ages makes clear that the Catholic Church authorities and especially the monks were invaluable in preserving learning. He makes clear that the early Catholic monks and nuns were the only literate people in Europe, and they preserved...

SNIP As you've probably realized by now, we have a weakness for extremely quirky food combinations -- hello, Cronut and Ramenburger -- and extraordinarily large things, like the 4,000-pound chocolate cake Guittard made for Beverly Hills' centennial. So how could we not tell you about the Screamin' Pizza Burger? According to Nick, the blogger behind DudeFoods -- and the man who brought the concept of bacon-lattice into the public consciousness -- all you need to make one is two full-size frozen pizzas, one four-pound beef patty and a spatula of mind-blowing proportions. Find instructions and photos -- and details on...

"The lawlessness of Hitler's Germany, beneath a veneer of legal forms, was absolute. As Goering put it, "The law and the will of the Fuhrer are one." Hans Frank: "Our constitution is the will of the Fuhrer." Hitler worked entirely through decrees and ordinances, as opposed to law, here again resembling Lenin, who never showed the slightest interest in constitution-making."