What We Are Reading Today: Rodin’s Egypt by Bénédicte Garnier

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Updated 08 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: Rodin’s Egypt by Bénédicte Garnier

Celebrated as one of the fathers of modern European sculpture, Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) created expressive and emotive human bodies in works that abandoned narrative and embraced the subject and materiality of his medium.

While his revolutionary approach to the body broke from neoclassical tradition, he revered the works of antiquity, in which he saw the truest expressions of nature.

Rodin was particularly enthralled by the art of ancient Egypt, amassing a collection of more than 1,000 Egyptian objects. The book reveals the profound influence Egyptian art had on Rodin’s work.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Pedantry’ by Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Updated 13 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Pedantry’ by Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths.

“On Pedantry” offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates.

Taking readers  from the academies of ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us.