A New Book From ... Fulton Sheen!

  

By Dale Ahlquist

Publishing is often a pain and a drain, but it is not without a few pleasures. When I started ACS Books as an arm of the American Chesterton Society, it was fun to bring some titles into print that did not fall into any known category, which meant that nobody else was likely to publish them anyway. In general, writers are creative; publishers are not. Being a writer myself, I probably don’t think enough like a publisher. Which is why my publishing arm is part of a non-profit organization. And so I have had the privilege of publishing the firstever biography of Frances (Mrs. Gilbert) Chesterton, an annotated version of Hilaire Belloc’s oddball masterpiece TheFour Men (with notes provided by Deacon Nathan Allen, who along with three others, recreated Belloc’s famous fictional-factional walk across Sussex), a creative and unexpected explanation of the Catholic faith under the cover of TheCatechism of Hockey, and a hilarious piece of crime fiction called GetLouie Stigs about a low-level mob figure who gets convicted of fraud and sentenced to … a monastery. You should read them all.

An Economics of Justice & Charity

The Church has always concerned itself with issues of justice in society, and popes have taught extensively on the topic since the late 1800s. Unfortunately, many Catholics in our day are not aware of this teaching, or only consider it in regard to things like helping the poor. Helping the poor is a very important aspect of it, but the scope of the Church’s teaching on matters of social justice go much further. Any aspect of social life which involves questions of ethics or morality fall within the scope of this teaching. Thomas Storck’s new book, An Economics of Justice & Charity, is a guide that shows how the Church’s teaching is very clear, has never changed, and definitely applies to areas of social life like economics.

House Rulez

by David W. Cooney

What limits are there to what people will do for money or some other form of success? This question is the basis of what is called, “reality television.” While some people point out that the situations of these shows are unreal, the “realities” that are being presented to us are the decisions of the people in these situations. What alliances will they make and break? What lies will they tell? What are they willing to do to each other? To what will they subject themselves in order to win? House Rulez takes these questions to a new level.

A Review of All the Devils Are Here

This article was originally published on

The Distributist Review

on 4 February, 2012

All the Devils Are Here, by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, is a fascinating look at the principle players who brought about the financial crisis of 2008. It reveals the motives and mistakes made over the course of a decade by those who were entrusted with running the largest financial corporations of the world as well as those who were entrusted with regulating them. It explodes the myth that the market is self-regulating in a way that will result in what is best for all. It also explodes the myth that centralized regulation of huge corporate interests will protect the average citizen from corporate greed. I can’t imagine too many Austrian or Keyensian capitalists would truly like what is revealed in this work, for both sides can only defend their positions by ignoring half of what these authors have uncovered and presented for us.