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Before launching into this business, we should pause to note the passing of the writer Susan Bergman, a Books & Culture contributing editor, who died on January 1. Her book Anonymity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994) is one of the finest memoirs to be published in the last half of the 20th century. Both in its literary excellence and in its unsparing truth-telling, it set a high standard for Christian autobiography. We'll have more on Susan in the pages of the magazine.

So many books, so many magazines, so many words—one great blooming, buzzing confusion, but with an order underlying it all, the outlines of which we are able to grasp and the splendor of which—in all its magnificent excess—demands praise. In a recent issue of the journal Markets & Morality (Vol. 8, No. 1, 2005), John Schneider of Calvin College has a review of Christopher J. H. Wright's Ethics for the People of God (InterVarsity, 2004). I recommend both the book and the review, which is largely critical. Schneider observes that, "on the matter of human flourishing, Wright omits discussion of creation narratives—most notably Eden—and he works very hard to remove all traces of extravagance from key narratives of the Land, so as, we suppose, to bring them into line with a Christian ethics of temperance and moderation. In consequence, the exorbitant description of God's vision of Israel's (Deut. 8) flourishing in a good land, flowing with milk and honey, bursting with copper and iron, where their herds and houses will become large, and so forth, gets distilled into a paradigm of sufficiency." Consider this Corner an homage to divine extravagance.

Here then are some subjective "awards" for the past year or so:

Best Reader: Remembered Past: John Lukacs on History, Historians, and Historical Knowledge , edited by Mark G. Malvasi and Jeffrey O. Nelson (ISI). Talk about "extravagance"! Bless ISI for giving us this splendidly fat sampling from Lukacs' prodigious output (including a bibliography of his writings). And Lukacs is still at work; his latest, June 1941: Hitler and Stalin, is due in April from Yale University Press. Down the road from ISI: a Solzhenitsyn Reader, including some previously untranslated material.

Greatest Triumph of Scholarly Publishing: The Correspondence of William James (Univ. of Virginia Press). The publication of the 12th volume, edited by Ignas K. Skrupskalis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, on the cusp of 2005 marked the completion of a great treasure for scholars and enterprising readers more generally. Look for more on this edition in our pages.

Most Intriguing Literary Discovery of the Year: Philip Terzian, Books & Arts editor for The Weekly Standard, was browsing in the 1928 Summer Social Register when he discovered a mock-entry supplied by T. S. Eliot in which Eliot gave himself and his first wife, Vivien, three nonexistent daughters (Betty, Verona, and Aurelian) and a castle in East Coker. As Terzian observes, Eliot's "marriage was a source of constant tension and anxiety, and friends were disturbed by his breakdowns and torment." It was then, also—in 1927—that Eliot became a British citizen and was "baptized and confirmed in the Church of England." If "Eliot's state of mind" at this time remains mysterious, "cloaked by reticence and deliberate obscurity," nevertheless, Terzian concludes, "Old Possum appears to have lurked near the surface, the squire of Castle Eliot and his three adoring daughters." Terzian's essay and a copy of the mock-entry appeared in the September 19, 2005 issue of TWS.

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January (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50