A lot of the work of MARS HILL AUDIO involves bibliographic scouting missions. We often hear from our listeners that they would never have known about a particular book if they hadn’t heard our interview with the author.
But for every author we interview, there are dozens of books, articles, websites, and blog postings that help inform our editorial decisions. This page is a way we can pass some of that knowledge on to you. We also feature information and commentary about various events, as well as reports of the subsequent activities (published and otherwise) of previously interviewed authors.
If you haven't already, be sure to peruse our topical index and our guest index for excellent resources that are often cross-referenced to Journal issues and other MARS HILL AUDIO content. A full catalog of our audio resources is available here.
If you were intrigued about our features on
volume 82 about Philip Rieff and would like to know more about his ideas before committing to reading him,
a pithy summary of Rieff's views by critic George Scialabba appeared in a recent issue of the
Boston Review. . . . [
Read more]
Since the publication of the book that made her a celebrity intellectual,
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), Camille Paglia has been focusing attention on connections within the fabric of Western culture that are often ignored or denied. This has earned her a bundle of suspicion from across the political and ideological spectrum. So, for example, when she writes that "the route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion," she will no doubt frighten leaders in the arts while flummoxing many American religious leaders, who can't imagine why we ought to bother reviving the fine arts. . . . [
Read more]
One of the reasons I do the work I do is because I believe that American society is in a state of cultural deterioration, and that the Church is often making things worse rather than better. Specifically, serious art, literature, and music no longer have the position of importance in the lives of educated Americans they once had, and I believe that our lives (and the shared life we call our "culture") are worse off for that. Celebrities (people famous for being famous rather than for creative achievement) have replaced artists in the minds and hearts of people who should know better. That was one of the subjects addressed in the commencement address given at Stanford University this year by Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. . . . [
Read more]
Just before the Independence Day holiday this year, Doubleday published David Gelernter's
Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion. Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale and a frequent contributor to several magazines, often writing about the visual arts. His new book serves as a hearty rebuttal to the claim that America is the product of post-Christian and secularist ideas. . . . [
Read more]
About Mars Hill Audio