From our July 1984 issue, a review of James Webb’s third novel, A Country Such As This (Doubleday). Yesterday Webb announced he’s running for president, the fifth Democrat to declare, and certainly the most distinguished literary talent in the race…

On Holy Thursday, my wife and I drove down from our home in San Jose, CA, about 300 miles to the coastal city of Ventura, where we had rented a house to be with our grown children over the Easter…

My wife and I are gearing up for our eleventh year of homeschooling. We started in 1995, after our two younger children, Nathan and Anna, had completed the first grade and kindergarten in a parochial school. They were close enough…

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — During the first six weeks of the summer break, I teach a course in general linguistics, an annual routine ordinarily performed in one of the older campus buildings. This year the routine was broken by an…

One day about four years ago, the classics department chairman came into my office to share an idea he’d been mulling over. Times being what they are, the idea had little to do with teaching Latin or Greek and much…

Two Fridays ago, about twenty minutes before my 11:45 Elementary Latin class, a student came to my office to drop the course. It was the end of the third week of the fall quarter, and she had scored below 50…