The Reading Room

The OLL blog explores the fascinating, vital, and often surprising texts and people that fill our library. Come talk in our library!

George Washington’s Rules of Civility

By: Steve Ealy

John Adams, in a letter dated April 22, 1812, confided to Benjamin Rush his belief  that George Washington was “too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation.” This was not the first time that the often-aggrieved Adams had lashed out at the man who towered over him both in height and in the esteem of their countrymen. In an earlier letter, dated November 11, 1807, Adams cataloged Washington’s “Talents,” which accounted for “his immense elevation above his Fellows.” 
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The Satyr Play: The Friar’s Tale and the Summoner’s Tale

By: Nathaniel Birzer

Geoffrey Chaucer’s attack on the clergy in his prologue to The Canterbury Tales takes on new life in the form of the rivalry between the Friar and the Summoner, who each take their turn following the Wife of Bath. In their…
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Cato and George Washington

By: Walter Donway

I suspect many admirers of the American Revolution fail to appreciate the influence that the history of ancient Rome, its philosophers and statesmen, and its fate exerted on our founders—almost all Age of Enlightenment thinkers in…
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Why You Should Read “All the King’s Men”

Our friends at the University of Louisville's McConnell Center launched an interesting program this year in which they are asking authors and experts to tell us why WE should read the books that helped shape them or those that have…
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The Spectator: Get Some Class, Folks!

By: Walter Donway

In 1663, there were 82 coffeehouses in London; by 1734, there were 551 in the city.
With coffee and coffeehouses came conversation and meetings to discuss business. This applied to coffeehouses but also to taverns and homes of the…
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Dante, Statius, Virgil and the Nature of Being in Dante’s Divine Comedy

By: Alexander Schmid

When one lets drip a drop of water into a placid lake, what happens? Circles ripple from the origin. What then is the drop of water, exactly? Is it the water which drops into and merges with the larger body of water, or is it the…
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The Other Bennett Sister

By: Renee Wilmeth

“Mary was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs. Bennet’s being quite unable to sit alone. Mary was obliged to mix more with the world, but she could still…
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OLL’s April Birthday: David Ricardo (April 18, 1772 – September 11, 1823)

By: Peter Carl Mentzel

April’s OLL Birthday Essay is in honor of the English stockbroker, political economist, and parliamentarian David Ricardo.  During his relatively short life, Ricardo made contributions to the field of economics that were, and…
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Cobden’s Age of Improvement

By: Janet Bufton

Richard Cobden reminds us that the cause of free trade is not one of bloodless economics, but of improvement, prosperity, and peace. 
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OLL’s March Birthday: Maimonides (30 March 1135 [?] – 12 December 1204)

By: Peter Carl Mentzel

March’s OLL birthday essay is in honor of the great Jewish rabbi, legal scholar, philosopher, community leader, and physician Moses ben Maimon, better known by the Hellenized version of his name, Maimonides.  In Hebrew he is…
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Walt Whitman Remembers the Ladies

By: Steve Ealy

In both poetry and prose Walt Whitman envisions an America in which men and women are seen as equals. In an early draft (1847) of Leaves of Grass he wrote, “I am the poet of women as well as men / The woman is not less than the man.…
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Welcome Home, Quasimodo! A Tale of Two Notre Dames

By: Walter Donway

Setting: Present-day Notre Dame Cathedral. It is nightfall.
The great, long-silent bells toll, their resonant voices echoing across the Paris sky. Now, a lone figure moves among the towering spires, the freshly restored stonework,…
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OLL’s February Birthday: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. (February 26, 1671 - February 4, 1713)

By: Peter Carl Mentzel

February’s OLL Birthday essay is dedicated to Anthony Ashley Cooper, better known to history as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, or sometimes just Shaftesbury. He was an important statesman and Whig politician during the turbulent…
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The Reading Room Archives

Reading Room Contributors

Steve Ealy

Steve Ealy

Nathaniel Birzer

Nathaniel Birzer

Walter Donway

Walter Donway