How to Read Anything That talks about What Has Already Happened

September 2, 2020.Reading time 15 minutes.

I’m reading Rodney Stark’s Triumph of Christianity in which he argues that one of the worst things that happened to Christianity was Constantine’s legacy of a “rich, powerful, and intolerant church” which suppressed religious competition (Stark, 182). It was not until the Reformation came along in the 16th century and “undid much of Constantine’s harm […]

Book Review: War and Peace, “Second Epilogue…”

August 22, 2020.Reading time 14 minutes.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace, “Second Epilogue: A General Discussion on the Historian’s Study of Human Life, and on the difficulty of Defining the Forces that Move Nations. The Problem of Free Will and Necessity” (Norton Critical Edition, 1867). In the second epilogue to War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy argues that describing the “life of nations,” otherwise […]