Books Archives
September 25, 2007
Book review.
| Steve Talbott’s new book Devices of the Soul is, first, a careful and illuminating examination of technological society by a man conversant with its sources and mechanics; second, a calm, elegant but unrelenting polemic against the particular disorder and infirmity engendered by it; and third, a series of intimations toward the recovery of health. In all three guises, the book is a valuable contribution; in the last, it is most intriguing and provocative. The author is a man of unusual breadth of learning: he turned from organic farming to software programming and technical writing, and from that to online pamphleteering with an electronic newsletter called NetFuture. He was urging caution against the “widespread utopian expectations for the Internet” well before the Internet had hit its stride. In this book Talbott urges nothing less than a recovery of our humanity, which he perceives as threatened by our idol-worship of technology. [read more] |  |
December 5, 2007
Interview on Defending Life with Ignatius Press
| Ignatius Press just published an interview of me conducted by Carl Olson. The interview is about my new book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007). You can find the interview here. |  |
December 18, 2007
The irony of Bob Dylan.
Mr. J. H. Kunstler, of the Peak Oil theory fame, reviewed Bob Dylan’s first volume of memoirs some time ago. Dylan fans (of whom I doubt this website has in abundance) will find in it some insight and interest, though I only link to it reluctantly — not least because of Kunstler’s penchant for profanity. If you don’t know or like Dylan, or are repelled by the deliberate if rare use of oaths or vulgarity in critical writing, the essay will probably just fatigue you: so I’ll offer just a couple points for your notice.
February 18, 2008
Christianity Today Review of Defending Life
In the February 2008 issue of Christianity Today, Douglas LeBlanc reviews my book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007). You can read the review online here.
July 27, 2008
My sister's forthcoming book: How to Raise the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation
My baby sister, Elizabeth, has a book coming out next year with HarperCollins. Here's the blurb for it from Publishers Lunch Weekly:
Actress and comedienne Elizabeth Beckwith's HOW TO RAISE THE PERFECT CHILD THROUGH GUILT AND MANIPULATION, a humorous and irreverent spoof on a parenting guide that bridges the gap between funny childhood memoirs and edgy self-help manuals, in a very nice deal, to Mary Ellen O'Neillat Collins, by Frank Weimann of The Literary Group.
I've read portions of the manuscript. It is VERY funny.
Here's a video my sister made with her husband 6 years ago. It's called "Child Bride (aka `Chads Disease')":
January 12, 2009
Computers, minds, and Aristotle
The recently published Philosophy of Computing and Information: 5 Questions, edited by Luciano Floridi, is a collection of quasi-interviews with prominent philosophers, cognitive scientists, and computer scientists. (The same five questions were sent to each of the contributors, who were asked to respond to them either question-by-question or in the form of an informal essay. Hence my label “quasi-interviews.”) Several of the contributions are particularly interesting from an Aristotelian point of view.
January 15, 2009
Christian polemics, the God of the philosophers, natural law, etc.
JD Walters of the blog Unnatural Theology and I debate The Last Superstition. See his review here and my reply here.
January 23, 2009
Purely academic
In his recent book Save the World on Your Own Time, Stanley Fish tells his fellow academics to shut up and teach, and stop politicizing the classroom. Here is my review of the book, for the online edition of City Journal.
April 15, 2009
My sister Elizabeth's forthcoming book, Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation
My sister, Elizabeth Beckwith, is publishing a book this Fall with Harper Collins, Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation. Above is a picture of her and the book's cover, which has just appeared online at Amazon.com, which includes this blurb about her:
May 16, 2009
J. P. Moreland's new book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism
Today I was blessed to receive a signed copy of J. P. Moreland's new book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009)
J. P. is a dear friend who I have known since 1987. We edited a book together (along with William Lane Craig, who is pictured with J. P. and me above), To Every One An Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (IVP, 2004), have lectured together at a variety of venues and academic conferences, and are the general editors of a forthcoming monograph series with InterVarsity Press on Christian Worldview Integration. He has been not only a dear friend, but a Christian scholar from whom I have learned so very much both philosophically and spiritually. And during some very difficult times each of us has had over the past decade (mine, unlike J.P's, made the papers), we leaned on each other's counsel and encouragement.
So, I was deeply moved when I saw that J. P. dedicated his new book to me:
"To Francis Beckwith. Sturdy lover of the Imago Dei."
I am humbled by the honor bestowed on me by my dear friend.
How fitting that J. P.'s book arrived only moments before my wife and I drove to Saturday vigil Mass at which we heard these words of Christ in the Gospel reading (John 15:9-17 - NAB):
"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another."
June 30, 2009
Churchill's adventures
To the puzzlement of many, one of the first changes our new President made to the White House was sending back to Britain a bronze bust of Sir Winston Churchill that had watched over the Oval Office since the September 11th attacks. There was little explanation for this gesture, or hint of its significance.
The significance of Churchill for Americans, and for all mankind, need hardly be hinted at. He was the greatest statesman of the calamitous twentieth century, and among its greatest men of letters.
Fortunately, though America now lacks the bronze of the great man, thanks to ISI, a small publisher out of Wilmington, Delaware, we no longer lack a current edition of one of his neglected literary works. ISI has brought forth a new printing of Churchill’s 1932 collection of essays, Thoughts and Adventures, and we are all the richer for so superb and enjoyable a read.