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Jacques Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence," a cultural history of the last 500 years of Western civilization is definitely worth reading. Barzun has put his own 90+ years of life, reading and thinking into a fine study of our cultural heritage that is useful and interesting however much one knows about history or culture.

I'm not really a big fan of today's fiction, but for those who are, I can recommend "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry, a story of Parsees and untouchables in Bombay that's a worthy successor to the great novels of the 19th century. Also, just about anything by Robertson Davies, a great Canadian novelist of recent years. Davies had a real talent for creating characters and drawing readers into a world not so different from our own, but more interesting. His work is uneven, but once I picked up one of his books I always wanted to finish, and when I had, I couldn't wait to read the next one.

For today I will add a book from 2001 that is still pretty new to most.

It really addresses the question of the force of Christianity at the time of the founding.

On Two Wings, Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding by Michael Novak. (ISBN 1-893554-34-1)

I enjoyed his presentation and his documentation...lol, and I'm not that big on footnotes.