Season's best.

HILTON KRAMER, onetime chief art critic for the New York Times and now co-editor and co-publisher of The New Criterion, has long been one of our most valuable cultural resources. In his highly readable new anthology, The Triumph of Modernism: The Art World, 1985-2005 (Ivan R. Dee, 384 pp., $27.50), he presents his subject unflinchingly and with great insight. The book's "guiding ambition," he writes, "is to discriminate between the genuine and the fraudulent in cultural life."

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What is essential to Kramer is that what we call modernism in art remain true to its high spiritual vocation. "Modernism," he explains, "denominates not a particular 'stance' or style--it is by disposition neither figurative nor abstract, for example--but rather a discipline: the discipline of truthfulness, the rigor of honesty." And it emerged in precisely the century that needed it most:

  Looking back on the history of modernism in the 20th century, what is
  especially striking is the violence that was directed against its
  achievements by the most horrific totalitarian regimes in recorded
  history: the Nazis in Hitler's Germany and the Communists in Stalin's
  Russia. And if we ask the question of what it was about modernist art
  that prompted such a massively destructive response, I believe the
  answer is clear: Modernist art was seen to provide a spiritual and
  emotional haven from the coercive and conformist pressures of the
  societies in which it flourished. Modernism represented a freedom of
  mind that totalitarian regimes could not abide. It is in this sense,
  perhaps, that the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition that Hitler
  devoted to modernist art in Munich in 1937 may now be seen to have
  marked the beginning of the "postmodernist" impulse.

There is great wisdom about cultural history--and, more important, about art itself--in this delightful and thought-provoking book.

* One of the most heartening aspects of modern ecumenism is the greater openness among Protestants to reflection on the life and example of the Virgin Mary. Tim Perry's new book, Mary for Evangelicals: Toward an Understanding of the Mother of Our Lord (IVP, 320 pp., $24), is actually slightly mislabeled: While it's written from an evangelical standpoint, it's an excellent introduction to the theological understanding of Mary not just for evangelicals but even for Catholics and indeed for any other interested readers. Perry examines in detail the Scriptural accounts of Mary, the reflections of the Church Fathers about her, and the historical development of Marian devotion in the medieval and modern periods. The New Testament, writes Perry, "does not apotheosize [Mary] in the manner that later, non-canonical writings do"; and a vibrant evangelical faith is fully consistent with an appreciation of Mary's special role in salvation history, as long as there is no confusion of her creaturely role with the "uncreated mediation of God in Christ."

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This is a splendid and important book, of value to all Christians who seek to understand more deeply the truths of their faith.

* Anglican bishop N. T. Wright remains one of the most impressive theologians of our time. In Evil and the Justice of God (IVP, 176 pp., $18), he offers mature Christian reflection on the problem of evil. The Cross, he writes, offers God's answer to the world's brokenness: "In the full outworking of the victory of the Cross God will win the final victory over the forces of evil, chaos and death, demonstrating them to be intruders into his good world and overthrowing all the power they have arrogated to themselves." Central to this outworking is the process of forgiveness: "The command to forgive one another ... is the command to bring into the present what we are promised for the future, namely the fact that in God's new world all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

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* Your children are old enough to start looking into colleges, which means you're old enough to start despairing: Who knew that four years of beer, pot, sex, and making connections for future job opportunities could be so damned expensive? But don't give up hope: There are still a lot of schools in this country where your kids can get what used to be called, unironically, an education. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has just published All-American Colleges: Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-Fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith (ISI, 336 pp., $22), which describes 50 schools parents--and their intellectually adventurous offspring--should certainly know about.