Ladies and Gentlemen!
Here it is at last the book that my father wrote along with Fr. John McCloskey and Brian Robertson, and which I helped to edit and research for. Pre-order your copy today!
Cheers,
Peter Hilaire Bloch
Dear Friends of Belloc:
On behalf of my fellow editors, Fr. C. John McCloskey, Brian Robertson, and the Faith and Reason Institute under the leadership of Robert Royal – we would like to invite you to pre-order your copy of the collection of Hilaire Belloc’s best writings.
We thank you for considering purchasing it on preorder. Perhaps it would also be suitable for gifts for others, and to circulate this notice to friends and relatives and others who may be interested. The timing is good for a reordering of our minds to culture and Christian civilization. Belloc is the paladin of that effort, and a kindly guide through life’s measureless wonder and warfare.
Here is the link to Saint Benedict/Tan Press for pre-order of The Essential Belloc: a Prophet for Our Times.
Below is the book jacket copy. I will be doing a book signing at the Catholic Information Center on April 21, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. followed by wine and cheese reception. Fr. James Schall who wrote the Preface to this book, will be in attendance and will introduce a short talk.
Your scrivenous scribe,
Scott Bloch, Secretary of Belloc Society of Washington, DC
“More than any other man, Hilaire Belloc made the English-speaking Catholic world in which we all live”
-Frank Sheed
He was a poet, a polemicist, and a prose stylist without peer, but Hilaire Belloc (1870-1954) was first and above all a mighty champion of the Catholic faith. With his brave (and sometimes brash) defenses of Catholic civilization, he taught an entire generation of Catholics never to stand for being treated as second-class citizens in the predominantly Protestant Anglosphere.
Today, with the Faith once again suffering scorn and contempt from all sides, it is time to re-discover this Catholic champion.
The Essential Belloc draws upon the prolific writer’s works (he authored more than 140 books, plus countless articles, pamphlets, and letters) to provide a comprehensive overview of his ideas, style, and personality. More than just a collection of quotes, these pages offer rich samplings from Belloc’s writings, affording you a solid introduction to his thoughts on:
• The foundational link between European culture and the Catholic faith
• The anti-Catholic historical myths that the English-speaking world has come to accept as fact
• The limits—and dangers—of science that has abandoned faith in God
• The latent power and future menace of militant Islam
• The characteristic faults of political and economic systems that deviate from Catholic principles
• The particular charms of places throughout the world: their towns and roads, their churches and inns
• The love of good food, wine, and ale, and the songs of camaraderie that go with them
And more—plus delightful examples of Belloc’s poetry and wit.
Belloc himself once remarked that “genius is the ability to think in a very large number of categories.” In The Essential Belloc you will marvel at how well he fits that very definition, and be edified by the breadth of his brilliance—and its continuing relevance for the modern world.
SOME BLURBS:
“Hilaire Belloc’s superb portrait of England’s ill-starred cardinal, Wolsey, would crown any normal writer’s career. But with Belloc, this is just the tip of an iceberg; his range and brilliance as a writer have been matched by very few moderns. Father McCloskey has done a marvelous service by collecting many of Belloc’s most insightful passages into one volume. The Essential Belloc is an invaluable resource and hugely enjoyable reading.”
+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver
At a time when Catholicism is again vilified, Fr.C John McCloskey, Scott Bloch, and Brian Robertson have done a timely service to us all by bringing forth this affectoinate and appreciative study of Hilaire Belloc, that spendlid writer, modern prophet, and morally courageous defender of the Faith.
— Pat Buchanan
“From graceful depths to bumptious joy, Belloc’s prose deserves an audience literate, allergic to cant, and wise. Nevertheless, it will have to make do with us.”
–David Whalen, Associate Provost, Hillsdale College
Hilaire Belloc should be essential reading for any serious Catholic wishing to get to grips with the modern world and the evils it promotes and fosters. And if Belloc is essential reading what better than a book that brings together the “essential Belloc” into one power-punching volume?
— Joseph Pearce, author of Old Thunder: a Life of Hilaire Belloc
Belloc believed that party and the state are not all powerful, that the Church and Family have primacy of place. He married an American and was fond of saying that our Declaration of Independence was a master work of freedom in the world’s history. As such, we need him more than ever to reestablish our religious liberties, the rights of the family, of marriage, and the sacred right of property.
–Senator Rick Santorum, author of It Takes a Family
Economics and competition never happen in a moral-free zone. Hilaire Belloc offers us a roadmap for a healthy economy and a healthy culture. Read this book and you will see how Belloc was among the few in the last hundred years who advocated for better business principles that are not predatory but just, not given over to big government but ordered to free people in a free economy.
— Dr. Andrew Abela, Chair of Department of Business and Economics, Catholic University of America
“They called Hilaire Belloc “Old Thunder.” After Bellocian Thunder will come first the rain and then the fruit of truth for those able readers of The Essential Belloc who dare to wrestle with the master’s muscular prose.”
— Robert K. Carlson, Academic Dean, Wyoming Catholic College
“In the pantheon of English literature the bust of Hilaire Belloc has been relegated to a dusty corner, frequented only by the convivial cognoscenti who gather to drink claret beneath its shade. The great man deserves to be better known, the conviviality should be spread, and I hope The Essential Belloc finds the wide readership it deserves.”
— H. W.Crocker III, author of Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, A 2,000-Year History
There is no one like Hilaire Belloc, no one who could describe a battlefield or a heresy with such penetrating insight, no one who saw the future as clearly (eg, Islam’s rise; Calvinism’s vitality among the Protestants); no one who could conjure so invitingly and vividly the pleasures of hearth and home and friendship and walking and roaring. I thank Father Schall for pressing me to read him, and I thank Scott Bloch, Brian Robertson and Father McCloskey for taking the (no doubt bracing and wonderful) time to draw his insights and his splendid writing together for us and future generations to read, to savor, and to exhult in, and I hope it leads us all to give thanks to the good God who gave us Hilaire Belloc.
–William Saunders, Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel, Americans United for Life
Hurrah! And now let me celebrate with three choice discoveries from my own inadequate reading. And by the way, greetings.
"The glories of the past are destroyed, they are no longer understood, and language is forgotten. Letters, you have gone down in a cataract from depth of folly to further depth, from obscenity to obscenity, until you have reached the inane. For whom should any man now write? What ears remain to hear?"
– The New Keepsake
"Myself: There may be shrines and shrines on any land, and sanctities of many kinds. For you will notice, Grizzlebeard, or rather you should have noticed already, having lived so long, that good things do not jostle."
– The Four Men
"The time has come to talk at random about bridges."
– 'On Bridges', from On Something
Here’s a good review of The Essential Belloc by William Saunders on The Catholic Thing
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/a-prophet-for-our-times.html