Join the battle against cultural amnesia.
donor gift selections
Choose one of these exclusive gifts from The New Criterion as a “thank you” for your generous support. See below for all options.
Collectible Mug
Start your morning with the stimulation you deserve: a copy of The New Criterion by your side and a mug full of coffee in your hand. We are happy to offer our supporters this fine New Criterion mug, emblazoned with our classic logo and, this year, our November-issue color. It’s our gift to you for a modest contribution to our efforts. Value: $8
Boat Bag
Active literati need an easy way to cart books around town. We are pleased to offer our supporters our classic New Criterion boat bag once again. Made of sturdy, natural canvas, this bag features our classic logo, making clear your high-cultural preferences. Value: $15
Anniversary Boat Bag
While scarce supplies last, we are pleased to offer our supporters this sturdy, natural canvas bag featuring our fortieth-anniversary logo, making clear your high-cultural preferences. Value: $15
The New Criterion Anniversary Slipcase
Limited Supply
Give your fortieth-anniversary issues the pampering they deserve with this special New Criterion slipcase, perfectly sized to the ten-issue volume you know and love. Turn to one side to display our anniversary logo, or to the other to show The New Criterion’s famous livery in its distinctive monthly colors—proudly unchanged, just like our high critical standards, since 1982. Value: $35
Fall Bowtie
There is no better way to combine your excellent taste in cultural criticism with your sartorial panache than with our signature New Criterion bowtie. Manufactured in Japanese silk by Seigo exclusively for The New Criterion, this year’s design features the return of our “fall” theme, with our September, October, November and December colors right there in the repp pattern. Value: $65
Where Next?
Autographed Copy
edited by Roger Kimball
Encounter Books
(hardcover, 200 pages)
At least since Oedipus met King Laius on the road from Delphi to Thebes, the image of a crossroads has signaled a dramatic and morally fraught turning point. It was with this cargo of significance in mind that The New Criterion published a special series of essays on “Western Civilization at the Crossroads” during its fortieth-anniversary season. Featuring contributions by Conrad Black, Victor Davis Hanson, Roger Kimball, Andrew Roberts, and other luminaries, this book collects the ten special essays to assess where Western civilization is now, and where it’s going. Value: $25
Some Problems with Autobiography
by Brian Brodeur
Criterion Books
(hardcover, 88 pages)
Some Problems with Autobiography, Brian Brodeur’s fourth collection, and the winner of the twenty-second New Criterion Poetry Prize, grapples with the porous and fragmentary nature of midwestern American identity in poems that range across prosodic forms and hybrid genres. In it, Brodeur explores the perils of digital technologies, ecological uncertainties, and the inadequacy of language to convey our collective distress, asking how much pleasure and hardship the human heart can bear. From dramatic-mono-logue sonnets and narrative sestinas to discursive lyrics cast in Rubáiyát stanzas and Alcaic strophes, Some Problems with Autobiography brings ancient modes into startlingly con-temporary contexts. Value: $25
The Bridges of Robert Adam: A Fanciful and Picturesque Tour
AUTOGRAPHED COPY
by Benjamin Riley
Triglyph Books
(hardcover, 156 pages)
The bridge has always stood as a transitional structure not purely a work of engineering, nor simply a work of architecture. Its functional requirements are more stringent than those of the average building; it not only must stand up; it must stand up, support those who cross it, and effectively span the space over which it stands. As Samuel Johnson said, “the first excellence of a bridge is strength . . . for a bridge that cannot stand, however beautiful, will boast its beauty but a little while.” The Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728–92) understood these precepts well, continually building bridges that were not just structurally sound, but also aesthetically pleasing. Unlike his contemporaries, Adam did not view bridges as mere skeletons upon which to apply ornament. Rather, he sought to achieve architectural totality, incorporating his bridge designs into greater architectural programs, thereby producing aesthetically pleasing and contextually specific designs. From the Pulteney Bridge in Bath to the ruined arch and viaduct at Culzean Castle in Ayrshire, in The Bridges of Robert Adam: A Fanciful and Picturesque Tour, Benjamin Riley, Managing Editor of The New Criterion, will take will take the reader across Britain, shedding new light on an understudied aspect of the great architect’s career. Value: $40
Donate
A missive from Editor Roger Kimball
Dear Reader,
When people ask me what The New Criterion is all about, I sometimes recall the bracing observation with which John Alexander Smith, Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, began a course of lectures in 1914. “Gentlemen,” he said,
you are now about to embark upon a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Some of you, when you go down from the University, will go into the Church, or to the Bar, or to the House of Commons, or to the Home Civil Service, or the Indian or Colonial Services, or into various professions. Some may go into the Army, some into industry and commerce; some may become country gentlemen. A few—I hope a very few—will become teachers or dons. Let me make this clear to you. Except for those in the last category, nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life—save only this—that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
We encourage our readers to stand up and object to the objectionable.
Anyone who reads far into The New Criterion knows that many of our writers habitually uncover and analyze a lot of rot in the course of their duties as cultural pathologists. Our aim is to immunize readers against its virulence by encouraging them to identify, laugh at, and reject the rot that has infected so much of culture today.
That exercise in mental housecleaning is valuable in itself, providing as it does a measure of resistance to the de-civilizing tendency of politically motivated interpretive hyperbole.
There is also a subsidiary benefit, having to do with intellectual back-stiffening. In other words, it is our hope that The New Criterion will not only provide some inoculation against the intimidating forces of ideological groupthink and historical distortion that are such a prominent part of our cultural life today but also encourage readers to stand up and object to the objectionable.
That is a largely negative exercise. But The New Criterion also pursues an affirmative agenda, at the center of which is the battle against cultural amnesia. Even as we expose the rot that surrounds us, we aim to encourage firsthand encounters with the bottomless, sometimes eccentric, always illuminating deposit of cultural endeavor that has defined our civilization through the centuries. Among other things, this requires a continuous battle against the disease of presentism, a mind virus more prevalent, and in the end more insidious, than the many varieties of pathogens to which we have been subjected these past few years.
More than ever, the support of our family of readers, writers, and donors underwrites this battle. I hope I can count on you to help us continue in publishing the “best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits.” Matthew Arnold’s imperative from his book Culture and Anarchy describes, more than ever, the mission of what we do at The New Criterion—no less than your essential role in ensuring its continuation.
Yours faithfully,
Roger Kimball, Editor & Publisher
P.S. Every tax-deductible donation to The New Criterion makes a difference. All donors will be acknowledged in our 2024 Annual Report.
For readers who are new to The New Criterion, we invite you to join our Supporters Circle with a donation of $100 or more. Every Circle member will receive an invitation to our annual Circle Lecture as well as access to our online media library.
With a donation of $2,000 or more, you become a Friend of The New Criterion, with invitations to our events throughout the year and your choice of gifts. Donors under forty years of age can enroll as a Young Friend for $200 or more a year.
For donors at every level, we are pleased to offer some special thank-you gifts for your generosity: our boat bag; a selection of books; and, back again, our popular silk bowtie in the magazine’s fall colors, made in Japan by Seigo exclusively for The New Criterion.
The New Criterion is published by The Foundation for Cultural Review, 900 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, a nonprofit public foundation as described in Section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code, EIN 13-3108424, which solicits and accepts contributions from a wide range of sources, including public and private foundations, corporations, and the general public. Contributions to The New Criterion are tax deductible according to the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. All gifts in excess of $75 will be acknowledged with a written disclosure statement describing the “quid pro quo” deductibility under section 6115 of the Internal Revenue Code.