In the throes of the Second World War, Oxford University scholar C. S. Lewis published an essay called “On the Reading of Old Books.” One might assume from the title that the essay was written by an ivory tower academic comically out of touch with the crisis of the moment: the struggle between Western civilization and fascist barbarism.
In fact, Lewis offered a moral and intellectual antidote to the totalitarian temptation: a return to ancient truths to help defeat the lies of his own day, and of ours.
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