World Enemy No. 1 by Jochen Hellbeck Book Review

 

World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews

 

A new book moves the center of World War II history eastward

 

World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews is a new book that offers a daring interpretation of World War II. Author Jochen Hellbeck is Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University. German-born Hellbeck's previous works include Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich, and Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin. Hellbeck's father, a 17-year-old draftee, fought briefly for Nazi Germany, before being injured on the Eastern Front. His maternal grandfather ran a factory that used Russian forced laborers. Penguin Press will release World Enemy No. 1 in the US on October 21, 2025. It is 560 pages, inclusive of black-and-white illustrations, maps, a bibliography, and an index.

One Battle after Another Movie Review

 

Is it just me? Is everyone else in on the joke? Am I the only one who has no idea what the punch line is and when it's our cue to laugh? Has everyone but me been issued the secret decoder ring that makes sense of all this? Am I too sensitive? Too Catholic? Too old? Too grounded in objective reality? Or is it drugs? Some audience members, in a movie theater, receive 3-D glasses. Do some viewers receive a magic mushroom concoction that renders schlock beatific?

That's what I was thinking as I sat in my local multiplex showing the new film One Battle after Another. Critics tout it as a "masterpiece." Rotten Tomatoes reports that One Battle after Another has a 96% positive score. The National Public Radio program, Pop Culture Happy Hour, called One Battle after Another "awe-inspiring," "eye-poppingly beautiful," "really, really fun," "a masterclass," "firing on all cylinders," full of "painterly compositions." The crew at the Next Best Picture podcast devoted four hours – four hours! – to slathering praise on the film. To these young guys, One Battle after Another is one of the greatest films ever made. In the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg crowns One Battle after Another an "anti-fascist film."

Is it just me?

NPR and Teen Pregnancy; Important Truths Left Unsaid

 

National Public Radio, Christianity, and Teen Pregnancy
Important truths left unsaid

 

I used to be a leftist. Back then, I was immersed in a worldview. I believed that we were right and they were wrong. Every now and then, though, I would experience cognitive dissonance. I might be reading an article in the New York Times, listening to a story on National Public Radio, or conversing with a fellow leftist. I would enter these exchanges feeling that we – I and the media source or my interlocutor and I – were on the correct side of things, and that we stood against all that was unholy and we would correct error with our righteousness.

 

But then I would hear something that would get me thinking. These thoughts would always be blurry; I unconsciously pressured myself not to pursue these thoughts to their logical conclusion, so they remained inchoate. I pressured myself because I did not want to contradict people who were smarter than I was. I had facts at hand to support a left-wing point of view. I did not have facts at hand to support a conservative point of view. And, I knew, even if unconsciously, that if I went too far in my transgressive thought patterns, I would be thinking and eventually saying things that I would be punished for. My interlocuter might mock my stupidity, and my missing the obvious flaw in my thoughts. Or I might upset someone. Or I might lose a friend.

What about the Bodies by Ken Jaworowski. Book Review

 

Atlantic Crime publishers released What about the Bodies by Ken Jaworowski on September 2, 2025. The author is an ex-boxer and New York Times editor. Jaworowski has been nominated for an Edgar Award for mystery fiction. Bodies is a 288-page, noirish thriller set in contemporary rust-belt Pennsylvania. What about the Bodies has been rapturously reviewed by bestselling thriller authors Dean Koontz, Alex Finlay, and Lisa Scottoline, among others.

What about the Bodies is one of the best-written books I've ever read. As I was reading, I kept waiting for Jaworowski to misstep. He never did. Jaworowski knows how to craft a sentence, what punctuation is and how to use it, and how to choose the right words and put them in the right order. He knows how to juggle the big picture so that each sentence works towards the larger structure and the final payoff. Characters are vivid; you know them. You'd recognize them on the street. Multiple chapter-end cliffhangers work like the dips and rises on a roller coaster ride. I had no idea how this book would end until the last page. As befits a noir thriller, there is brutality here, and sadism, and a touch of gore. But there is also real heart. Hearts that break, hearts that promise to heal, hearts that silently and invisibly endure. There is heroic self-sacrifice. There is also, to my great surprise, humor, and boy-oh-boy are those laughs earned. Jaworowski has said, "I hope I wrote a fast-paced thriller. I hope I wrote something entertaining and exciting." Mission accomplished. "But," he added, "I hope you can also do that and throw in a couple of questions about life and about what we think and about who we are." Mission accomplished twice over.

Fulton J. Sheen and American Catholicism

 

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: Convert Maker by Cheryl C.D. Hughes

A new book brings attention to a celebrity clergyman

A few years ago, YouTube recommended to me a sixty-year-old, black-and-white video. The video featured a Catholic bishop, in full regalia: cape; zucchetto, or skullcap; wide, silk fascia, or waistband; and a large pectoral cross. The bishop paced in front of a minimalist set: a blackboard, a bookcase, a statue of Mary, a cross. The man gazed into the camera, and spoke. He used no notes. His speech was fluid and dynamic. And that's all that happened, for the twenty-five-minute length of the broadcast.

I had initially hesitated to click on this link. Few people would feel compelled to devote time to such an old and unadorned video. I was curious, though. I vaguely remembered hearing about an old-time TV star named Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, how he had higher ratings than superstar comic Milton Berle. He was nominated for three Emmys, and won one, for "Most Outstanding Television Personality." So I stopped what I was doing, and watched the Sheen video.

Sheen had crazy eyes. Intense, staring right into you. Those eyes announced that he was in touch with something beyond this earth. It's a good thing he became a priest because people who burn as brightly as Sheen did, if they go down the wrong path, can do a lot of damage. Sheen poured himself into the camera. Watching this old video of a man who died in 1979 felt almost uncomfortably intimate.

Nazism and Christianity again; "Gott und Volk"

 As you know, I reject the identification of Nazism with Christianity. See here. I just stumbled across a NYT article from 1941. Screencaps below. 

Eddington 2025 : Masterpiece or Mess?

 

Eddington 2025

Ari Aster's COVID-19-and-BLM-themed film is either a masterpiece or a mess

Ari Aster is a 39-year-old American director, screenwriter, and producer. He was born in New York City. His poet mother and jazz musician father moved to England for a while, and then, when Aster was ten, the family moved to New Mexico. Aster has described his childhood self as a fat kid with a crippling stutter who was alienated from others, kicked out of prep school, and obsessed with horror films. "I've wanted to make my New Mexico movie since I was a kid," he says. In a YouTube video, Aster jokes about being "in the closet." When discussing a relationship, he refers to his significant other as "they" rather than "he" or "she." I have found no conclusive information about whether or not Aster is gay. Aster appears, in interviews, as a pale, slight, bespectacled, articulate, movie-obsessed nebbish.

His 2018 horror film Hereditary made a big splash. On July 18, 2025, Aster released Eddington, a "neo-Western." Eddington addresses COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, incest, prejudice against Native Americans, and societal breakdown caused by excessive internet use. Some hail Eddington as a "masterpiece." Plenty of other critics, both professional and amateur, argue that in Eddington, Aster bit off more than he could chew. The film never gels, they say, and the last act descends into violent chaos.