Love, Love, Love: And Other Essays

You cannot help but reflect on his [Charles Taliaferro] thoughts long after reading his essays.

Charles Taliaferro has always struck me as a paradigmatic philosopher—equal parts creative thinker, careful scholar, and passionate teacher. In these short essays, occasioned by the great and small exigencies of his own life, as well as by the broader flow of cultural events that impinge on us all, he brings the full richness of his philosophical training and insight into the service of thinking and living well, day to day. Ultimate issues are treated with a deftness and disarming simplicity, and yet richly complex echoes of their wisdom will linger long after these pages are read. It's good to see a philosopher who is so well respected and accomplished in the academic world courageously appraise the ordinary things of life to be as worthy of his disciplined thought as the extraordinary tools and texts he brings to bear on them.

The essays evince broad reading that takes in history and the classics. There are essays devoted to Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Chesterton, but such also make regular appearances throughout the essays, along with Dante, Chaucer, T. S. Eliot and more. We learn lessons from the Trojan and Peloponnesian wars, Waterloo, the siege of Stalingrad, and the lives of the saints. Love, Love, Love is a fun and satisfying read filled with humor and wisdom.

Drawing from personal experience within the context of his own life and personal observations, Professor Taliaferro writes with a combination of wit and wisdom that engages, entertains, and occasionally inspires.