About Martin Cothran

Martin Cothran is a writer and educator who lives in Danville, Kentucky. He is the Editor of The Classical Teacher magazine and is Instructor of Latin, logic, and rhetoric at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Cothran serves as Senior Policy Analyst at The Family Foundation of Kentucky. He is the author of five books, including Traditional Logic: Books I and II, Material Logic: Book I, Classical Rhetoric with Aristotle, and Lingua Biblica: Old Testament Stories in Latin.

The Decline of the Book & the Fall of Western Civilization

By |2022-05-22T17:21:27-05:00May 22nd, 2022|Categories: Books, Encyclopedia Britannica, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Soon the shelves will be gone, the books sold, leaving only the people, staring mesmerized at their screens. They won’t even notice that the books have been taken away. After libraries have all closed down or become free computer centers, there will still be people like me, feeling like monks in monasteries preserving books in [...]

When “Civilization” Became a Bad Word

By |2019-03-26T16:44:56-05:00May 4th, 2018|Categories: Civilization, Culture, Film, History, Television|

The very word “civilization” is now politically charged, implying as it does hierarchies of achievement and value judgments. That someone would say that our culture is better than any other, or that some other culture is deficient in some way, is the kind of thing that causes fainting spells among our intellectual class… Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation” [...]

The God of Men—and of Elves: Tolkien, Lewis, and Christian Mythology

By |2019-04-22T12:05:24-05:00April 1st, 2012|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Christianity|Tags: |

C.S. Lewis From earliest times, Christians have argued about the role of pagan learning in Christian education. The debate has never gone away, but generally speaking the church has preferred rather to use the learning of the pagans than to repudiate it. 

An essential part of the classical Christian education that held sway [...]

The Decline of the Book and the Fall of Western Civilization: Books vs Kindle

By |2014-05-19T07:08:42-05:00March 25th, 2012|Categories: Books, Encyclopedia Britannica|Tags: |

There was the Great Flood. There were the Ten Plagues of Egypt. There was the Fall of Rome. There was the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem and the Fall of Constantinople. And now this: The Encyclopedia Britannica is going out of print. While the Simpsons just celebrated its 500th show, the world’s greatest learned [...]

Go to Top