What We've Been Reading: 2024 Edition

Controversies in Church History is back! The first episode of 2025 is a review of the books I've been reading the past year, featuring some interesting works on theology and liturgy with a side dollop of nothing-to-do-with-Catholicism-in-particular. If you like hearing someone's else's opinions about books you've never read, this is the episode for you. Also, I preview upcoming episodes and lament how behind I am on book reviews. Cheers! Books Discussed: 1. Peter Kwasniewski, Treasuring the Goods of Marriage in a Throwaway Society 2. Abbé Claude Barthe, A Forest of Symbols: the Traditional Mass and its Meaning 3. Peter Kwasniewski, Ultramontanism and Tradition: the Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Church 4. Erick Ybarra, The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholic and Orthodox 5. Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms (Sword of Honor Trilogy #1) 6. Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution 7. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning 8. David Grann, The Wager: a Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder 9. Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon 10. Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: a Short History 11. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy 12. Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine 13. Ilan Pappé, A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict 14. Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: the Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassination Program

Om Podcasten

My name is Darrick Taylor, and I am the founder and proprietor of Controversies in Church History, a podcast that takes an in depth look at difficult, even disturbing, issues in the history of the Catholic Church. My perspective is unique, in that I am a faithful Roman Catholic, yet trained as a secular historian. Designed for Catholics but accessible for anyone interested in history, it balances storytelling with an academic sensibility.