Free Republic

With her charming grace and flowing ball gown, she certainly looks every inch the aristocrat. But then, Cressida Bonas has had her fair share of practice attending such regal events as featured in ITV's Doctor Thorne. Prince Harry's former girlfriend makes her television debut on Sunday in the three-part drama that sees her play the small part of Patience Oriel, a ‘very pretty’ potential love interest for a main character who is dismissed because her fortune is not big enough.

I have read books on Islam from many Authors including Martin Lings, Robt. Spenser , Bill Warner , Stephen Coughlin ,the Koran and the Hadiths by Bukhari. Plus others. For a person who doesn't want to go overboard like myself, and just wants to get the basics of what is going on with Islam and us Infidels, I would recommend a book by a former Muslim who has converted to Christianity, and changed his name to Mark A. Gabriel. Mr. Gabriel is a former Egyptian Muslim who was educated at Al Azhar Univ. in Cairo, the most influential Muslim University...

The Royal Mint has chosen Beatrix Potter’s thieving Peter Rabbit as the first character from children’s literature ever to appear on a UK coin. Peter, pictured in the blue jacket that he is forced to abandon in the garden of Mr McGregor when he is caught stealing vegetables, is captured on a special, coloured edition of a 50p coin available from today. The Royal Mint, which described Peter as “the most recognisable of Potter’s creations, and one of the most cherished from children’s literature”, will release uncoloured versions of the coin in change later this year.

ust 15 percent of people say they have personally benefited from ObamaCare, although more than one-third believe it has helped the people of their state, according to a poll released Monday. Most Americans -- a total of 56 percent -- say they haven't felt directly affected by the Affordable Care Act. Among those who have felt affected, more people say the law has hurt them than helped them, according to polling by National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Twenty-six percent of U.S. adults say they have been personally harmed by the healthcare law since its passage --...

Toni Morrison and Jane Austen are among the most-read female writers on college campuses, a new TIME analysis found.

One thing progressives are very, very good at is omitting facts that they find to be too difficult to deal with. So it goes for all of the black heroes who fought alongside our Founding Fathers during the American Revolution. The progressives continual racial narrative is what it is. I first learned of this book through Founders Fridays, because of the work of David Barton. After I read about 5 or 10 pages, I knew it needed to be made into an audiobook so that more people could consume it. Progressives have controlled the universities, have controlled history; for over...

I'm a history buff, especially when it comes to Texas. A pal of mine told me I should read this so I bought it a couple of years ago I guess, just got around to reading it this past fall. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

snip To understand these words "civilization" and "culture," the best book to read is T. S. Eliot's slim volume Notes Towards a Definition of Culture (1948). Once upon a time I commended that book to President Richard Nixon, in a private discussion of modern disorders, as the one book which he ought to read for guidance in his high office. Man is the only creature possessing culture, as distinguished from instinct; and if culture is effaced, so is the distinction between man and the brutes that perish. "Art is man's nature," in Edmund Burke's phrase; and if the human arts,...

Author Nelle Harper Lee, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 for her book, "To Kill a Mockingbird," passed away in her sleep Friday morning at the age of 89, her family has confirmed. "This is a sad day for our family. America and the world knew Harper Lee as one of the last century's most beloved authors," Hank Conner, Lee's nephew and a spokesman for the family, said in a statement Friday morning. "We knew her as Nelle Harper Lee, a loving member of our family, a devoted friend to the many good people who touched her...

In a recent essay, Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Neb., shared with readers how great literature has had a profound impact on his life. Now, he is striving to bring the gifts of Western civilization and Catholic culture to as many others as possible. Aleteia spoke with Bishop Conley about his vision and his plans for the Newman Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture in Lincoln. Could you talk about the role that great literature has played in your life, particularly in your formation as a person and in your spiritual formation? I grew up in the Presbyterian Church...

Five Books that illustrate why America is Exceptional I just watched -In the Heart of the Sea- based on the book of the same name, and it started me thinking about just what kind of men it took to make America the greatest nation on earth. Here is my list of five non-fiction books that I have greatly enjoyed that tell of a time when men were MEN. I have placed them in chronological order of when the event began. 1799: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex By Nathaniel Philbrick. The Essex, stove by...

Escaping Alcatraz: The History of the Prisoners' Attempts to Get Off The Rock by Charles River Editors The Vandals: The History and Legacy of Antiquity's Most Famous Barbarians by Charles River Editors World War II Cryptography: The History of the Efforts to Crack the Secret Codes Used by the Axis and Allies by Charles River Editors The French Resistance: The History of the Opposition Against Nazi Germany's Occupation of France during World War II by Charles River Editors Area 51: The History and Mystery of America's Most Controversial Military Base by Marshall Whitehurst The Navajo Code Talkers: The History of...

This sounds like a great book - thought you guys might be interested. In The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, Walsh brings his substantial erudition to bear on his best nonfiction work so far, a tour de force about how the “new nihilists” of the so-called Frankfurt School and their philosophy of “Critical Theory – like Pandora’s Box – released a horde of demons into the American psyche.” Disguised as a utopian dream, it– like Satan, a key figure in the book – instead sowed “destruction, division, hatred, and calumny.” This is not a casual beach read. It’s not even your typical...

In her disappointment, Kristina was driven to watch the 1967 Soviet epic that won director Sergei Bondarchuk an Oscar. "The interiors, the decor, the Moscow winter and the war scenes especially are ideal there," she told the BBC. "Of course Field Marshal Kutuzov and all the fighting were shot with such expense you wouldn't expect any flaws." No effort and no expense were spared in providing the Soviet film-makers with what they needed. 3,000 Soviet soldiers were drafted for one battle scene 57 museums donated exhibits for the shoots More than 40 state firms were enlisted to produce replica weapons...

When dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange came out in 1962, few thought it was a plausible imagining of the future. But, according to Malcolm McDowell, who stared in the novel's 1971 adaptation, it was in fact a chillingly accurate forecast. Speaking to the New York Daily News, McDowell explains how the Stanley Kubrick film shows a 'world in which all older people stay indoors with televisions on'. [...] The novel's central theme follows a group of violent 'droogs' - or gang members - who seek to illicit 'ultra-violence', mayhem and sexual depravity. The four young men pursue their pleasures after...

"As an interpreter of American constitutional government, McDonald has achieved a national reputation among historians, statesmen, and the literary public that began with the publication of We The People in 1958. Respected historians David M. Potter and C. Vann Woodward praised We The People in the pages of the Saturday Review and the New York Times, and shortly after the book's publication McDonald appeared on NBC's "Continental Classroom" television show. He delivered dozens of talks across the country during the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution, and in the 1980s Novus Ordo Seclorum was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 1987, the...

Profiles the seminal events that helped Hitler rise to power and consolidate his position, including the end of World War I, the Beer Hall Putsch, the Burning of the Reichstag, and the Night of the Long Knives "I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in the attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds ... Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it." - Dr. Karl Alexander von Mueller It is often claimed that...