Enquiry: A Publication of the AHI Undergraduate Fellows | vol. X
Few literary commentators would dispute that Wilfred Owen was one of the greatest war poets of the last hundred years. He wrote from personal experience as a British soldier in World War I. Surprisingly, these poems were written in just over a year, and of those he fought with, few knew he had such a gift.
Read MoreErnest Hemingway’s book A Moveable Feast was published posthumously in 1964. It is composed of poignant sketches looking back on Hemingway’s time in France with his first wife and their baby Jack, known as Bumby. It is set after World War I, when Hemingway was an unknown, struggling American writer living in poverty above a sawmill, writing in the cafes and roaming the streets of Paris.
Read MoreWashington Irving’s collection of short stories and essays, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, captivated American and European readers. The major American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said that everyone has a book that fires their imagination and is burned into their psyche well past childhood. For him, it was Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book. The stories are enchanting, haunting, humorous, astonishing and uniquely American. They made Washington Irving into an unexpected star at a relatively young age—37. In his career, he was a determined historian, trusted diplomat, superb essayist, and presidential biographer, but he was and is remembered principally as the writer of The Sketch Book collection, and especially a particular story found within it, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
Read MoreJohn Kaag’s latest work, American Philosophy: A Love Story, masterfully leads readers through a compelling personal narrative intertwined with an introduction to American philosophical thought.
This combination memoir and history begins in the backwoods of New Hampshire. On an escape to a small philosophy conference, Kaag, a philosophy professor at UMass Lowell, stumbles into the decaying library of long-deceased Harvard philosopher William Hocking in the town of Chocorua. Followed by the ghosts of his failing marriage and recently deceased alcoholic father, Kaag throws himself into the depths of the library as the Hocking family struggles to prop up the collapsing estate. In befriending Hocking’s granddaughters, he commits to cataloging the massive library, which is composed of numerous first editions and signed copies from American philosophers ranging from Emerson to Twain to Whitman.
Read MoreOn the day that Michel Houellebecq’s provocative new novel Submission was released in France, two Islamists murdered eleven people at the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
Read MoreLast Tuesday, Hamilton welcomed Gloria Greenfield to present her latest film, Body and Soul: The State of the Jewish Nation. Greenfield has worked in publishing, marketing, and management for over thirty years prior to founding of Doc Emet Productions in 2007. Greenfield, with Doc Emet Productions, dedicates her work to the advancement of a Jewish identity and advocation for the Jewish state. Greenfield has produced and directed three films since 2008. The event, sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Institute, was well attended by Hamilton students, alumni, and faculty.
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