Lazy (But Nevertheless Mildly Enriching) Pleasures (The Good Book) (Column‪)‬

THE ABUNDANTLY celebrated authors featured in this edition of "The Good Book" are well past their prime. Indeed, two of the three are dead. The essays collected in each text respond to no contemporary crisis, break no new intellectual ground, and rely upon no cutting-edge research. One might dismiss such publications as literary frippery--of little more value, perhaps, than fictive masturbation. In fact, I can't enthusiastically recommend any title by itself. Enjoyed as a group, however, the latest from Mark Twain (1835-1910), William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008), and Steven Weinberg (1933-) can illuminate in a way no single text--no matter how avant-garde--could. Each man, after all, was intensely engaged with the social movements, intellectual and technological achievements, and, of course, the politics of his respective era. And in quite distinctive ways, all three were obsessed with religion. They were, in other words, not so different from frequent patrons of this column.