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May 10, 2024 | 
feeds.feedblitz.com | Agnes R. Howard
The reasons for having children are self-explanatory. Why are we rejecting them? Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Pakaluk. Regnery Publishing, 2024. 256 pp, $29.99. Once while visiting a museum exhibit on important twentieth-century inventions, I saw a smartly dressed middle-aged woman standing in front of a panel on the birth-control pill.
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May 10, 2024 | 
currentpub.com | Agnes R. Howard
The reasons for having children are self-explanatory. Why are we rejecting them? Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Pakaluk. Regnery Publishing, 2024. 256 pp, $29.99. Once while visiting a museum exhibit on important twentieth-century inventions, I saw a smartly dressed middle-aged woman standing in front of a panel on the birth-control pill.
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Mar 13, 2024 | 
ivpress.com | Nadya Williams |Jeffrey Bilbro |Kelly M. Kapic |Agnes R. Howard
"In this moving, pastoral book, Nadya Williams plumbs the long history of assumptions and practices that culminate in what Pope Francis has termed our 'throwaway' culture. In the same way that the early Christian church dismantled the Roman Empire's commodification of human persons, so the gospel continues to bear witness to the intrinsic value of all humans, even those society deems useless.
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Jan 10, 2024 | 
feeds.feedblitz.com | Agnes R. Howard
It’s harder than we think it isSelf-Made: Creating Our Identities from DaVinci to the Kardashians by Tara Isabella Burton. PublicAffairs/Hachette, 2023. 288 pp., $30.00The son of a middle-class goldsmith, German painter Albrecht Dürer not only turned himself into a celebrity but made himself a new kind of saint. At least in Tara Isabella Burton’s book, Dürer becomes the patron saint of the self-made man. The “fantasy of self-creation” is a feature of our modern lives.
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Jan 10, 2024 | 
currentpub.com | Agnes R. Howard
It’s harder than we think it isSelf-Made: Creating Our Identities from DaVinci to the Kardashians by Tara Isabella Burton. PublicAffairs/Hachette, 2023. 288 pp., $30.00The son of a middle-class goldsmith, German painter Albrecht Dürer not only turned himself into a celebrity but made himself a new kind of saint. At least in Tara Isabella Burton’s book, Dürer becomes the patron saint of the self-made man. The “fantasy of self-creation” is a feature of our modern lives.
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Nov 27, 2023 | 
currentpub.com | Agnes R. Howard
Starbucks Roasteries ask little of us but cashStarbucks knows novelty will keep us coming in. A few years ago the Seattle coffee giant moved a destination roastery into what had been a flagship four-story Crate & Barrel store on a busy corner of Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s Magnificent Mile of destination shopping, with name-drop worthy neighbors like Nike and Burberry, Lululemon and Lego. The Mag Mile location is only the third Starbucks after the Seattle and New York locations to house a roastery.
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Nov 27, 2023 | 
feeds.feedblitz.com | Agnes R. Howard
Starbucks Roasteries ask little of us but cashStarbucks knows novelty will keep us coming in. A few years ago the Seattle coffee giant moved a destination roastery into what had been a flagship four-story Crate & Barrel store on a busy corner of Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s Magnificent Mile of destination shopping, with name-drop worthy neighbors like Nike and Burberry, Lululemon and Lego. The Mag Mile location is only the third Starbucks after the Seattle and New York locations to house a roastery.
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Oct 25, 2023 | 
feeds.feedblitz.com | Agnes R. Howard
What does it mean to live well in old age? Americans are bad at aging. (Note: Not being good at it doesn’t prevent us from having to do it.) Part of the problem is that we idolize youth. This idolatry is particularly conspicuous in the influential demographic that now struggles noticeably with aging, though maybe we need not trace every problem to that generation. Okay, boomer? Youth rules. Arbiters of taste cater to young people through popular culture, music, advertising, film, fashion.
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Oct 25, 2023 | 
currentpub.com | Agnes R. Howard
What does it mean to live well in old age? Americans are bad at aging. (Note: Not being good at it doesn’t prevent us from having to do it.) Part of the problem is that we idolize youth. This idolatry is particularly conspicuous in the influential demographic that now struggles noticeably with aging, though maybe we need not trace every problem to that generation. Okay, boomer? Youth rules. Arbiters of taste cater to young people through popular culture, music, advertising, film, fashion.
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May 2, 2023 | 
currentpub.com | Ellen B. Koneck |Natalie Carnes |Leah Libresco |Agnes R. Howard
Jennifer Banks’ book opens pathways and unveils vistasNatality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth by Jennifer Banks. W. W. Norton, 2023. 272 pp., $27.95Some books have the potential to change public discourse for the better. In this moment, when people on both sides of the political divide can agree that human life and dignity are under threat, a book on birth—natality—seems to be just the kind of book we need. *The hope for hopeEllen KoneckI was pregnant.
