Christmas

Last year, I suggested some Christmas purchases to people which a few took me up on, and which I certainly enjoyed. Vincent Bugliosi's history of the Kennedy Assassination, for instance, is clearly the definitive work in the field, and Dan Howe's What Hath God Wrought an excellent addition to the history of the American Republic. Even the Marvel Defenders were the source of not a little escapist amusement.

So, I thought that I might occasionally repeat the trick this year, as it were, by making suggestions for people of things that have caught my eye. Blogs are commonplace books where we can put just about everything and anything, after all. Just by way of illustration, I found a recipe for scouse, which is a form of Liverpool stew, on The Exile's site last night that I followed and enjoyed with a good bordeaux. That isn't what you would have expected from that great polemical site.

One thing I have also noticed, which it's probably trite to mention, is how much cheaper the internet is than the shops that are about to plunge into the chasm of deflation. I walk past two DVD stores every day, for instance. Were I to spend any money in them, I'd be even more of a mug than usual. I found editions of Crown Court, the excellent, real-jury and actors depiction of the criminal courts, for twelve pounds online at sendit.com. They are priced at thirty pounds in HMV and Zavvi. I recommend them to you--but only through your keyboard, if you like watching trials.

I've seen Doctor Who videos--and they are often the worst ones--at four, or five times their internet prices in such places, and Hitchcock collections at ridiculous mark-ups. If your Christmas entertainment is going to be alcohol, carbs and moving pictures (some of mine always is), get away from those DVD stores--quick!

I've also had a reader recommend what seems to be an interesting play on the catholic roots of the early European project, Alan Fimister's work on the Thomist origins of the European project. I certainly intend to buy it, and perhaps you should have a look at it too.

All sorts of religious influences lay beneath the European scaffolding. Here, for instance, is a link to Orlando Ferrera's History of European Integration Paper. In it, he shows how Italian Jesuits helped 'build Europe'. I often think that the Anglo-American world is very much a Calvinist and protestant place in its conceptions of the market and of righteousness, and in part its fear of Europe is because of Europe's catholic matrix. This paper strengthens that suspicion.

One legal book that I've come across lately which will be useful to inform anyone interested in debates over the right to life, euthanasia, or medicine is general, is Margaret Brazier's Medicine, Patients and the Law. It's beautifully written, clear, and invaluable.

For those of you interested in America's civic religion, I've recently come across two books that seem either to be influencing or trying to explain President-elect Obama. The historian and former LBJ sidekick Doris Kearns Goodwin has written Team of Rivals. It is essentially about Lincoln and Seward, (of which more later), but beyond that intrinsically interesting subject, I'de recommend just about anything she wrote.

Equally, Steve Sailer has turned a recent e-book on Obama into print. Before the inevitable complaints about Vdare, the site associated with Sailer, I might just reiterate that I consider myself an immigrant whose religion is at odds with the host country to which I owe loyalty, that I have two passports, and that I am taken more with the writing on vdare than in complete agreement with the views. I cannot, for instance, bring myself to say good things about Pat Buchanan. But the book itself, in the absence of Garry Wills, is worth a look.

The President-elect started his campaign with references to Lincoln (unlike Dubya, who began by flirting with the TR mantle that properly belonged to McCain in 2000) and as role models go, it isn't a bad one. Lincoln wasn't (probably) whom you and lots of other readers think he was though, and neither is Obama. Reading works of the sort I've mentioned might just remind you of all that before the inauguration.

What about light reading? I'm not so sure that you could go wrong with a good Cyril Hare, though I'm keeping that discovery for tube journeys. Hare's books are inevitably found in second hand stores, and ideal for the pocket of a suit jacket or overcoat.

Start planning your fun now, in the midst of all this appalling gloom that besets us. This economy is going down; there is no better place after mass and a meal than in front of some B movies or with a good book and a bottle. I'll also have the benefit of my family, most of whom won't be badly touched by the coming economic disaster. At least we can go down smiling, perhaps to something classical or The National singing songs like this....