Critics have described Cormac McCarthy as a writer beyond good and evil. But beneath the neuter austerity of McCarthy’s prose, a keen moral imagination is at work.
Professor Deneen’s book spurs us to exercise our rights more wisely, thus proving that we are indeed capable of living as a community of liberated individuals
In its apprehension of a certain American mode of being, ‘Cloudbursts’ is an indispensable monument to slip alongside the work of John Cheever and Peter Taylor
Mary McCarthy's writing is always taking the temperature of the room, feeling the social shifts in attention and power, uncovering pettiness and mistaken victories
A collection of Commonweal’s most insightful book essays, featuring Cassandra Nelson on Flannery O’Connor and Luke Timothy Johnson on Thomas Merton as a writer
If Leonard Cohen failed to live at the center of righteousness, he maintained a sense of where that center remained, and of how to find it again in prayer
What standards should we use to judge figures of the past? No one evokes this question more acutely than Pope Pius XII. Two books assess his actions in World War II.
This is the novel you get when you cross the demonical complexities of Poe with the malignant banalities of Kafka, but De Maria has added a menacing ingredient.
In his study of governance in U.S. history, historian Gary Gerstle shows that Americans have distrusted each other ever since they forged a single nation.
The critic and novelist John Berger argues that “the future has been downsized”—restricted to the mercenary parameters of finance capital and digital technocracy.
As a Catholic, O’Connor believed that the physical, perceptible, photo-graphable world is always pointing toward a larger and more enduring metaphysical reality.
In their respective books, Jason Moore and Jedediah Purdy both reckon with ecological disaster under capitalism. But John Ruskin knew something they don't.
Historian Frank Oakley rejects the idea that that Greece and Rome were secular. He insists that the “seedbed" for individual rights lies in the Latin Middle Ages.
Lincoln is a riddle because we are a riddle to ourselves. We are his heirs, for good and for ill. We cannot escape his legacy, and we don’t know what to make of it.
Writer David Means talks about ignorance and grace, the nature of time, the lasting effects of Vietnam, and how he came to write his new novel, 'Hystopia.'
In two new books, Hazareesingh and Bell incorporate American views into the 20th century struggles between republicans and Catholics in France over "basic freedoms"
The "culture industry" testifies to the expansionist ambitions of the late capitalist system, which can now colonize fantasy and enjoyment as it once did countries.
Among the merits of Roy Foster’s new book are the ways in which it moves past myths and conventional accounts to bring alive the intellectual ferment of the Rising.
I came home early and went straight upstairs to Mary and the baby. As soon as she saw me she began to cry. "What’s the matter?” I asked, already filling with dread.
"War and Peace" is called the greatest novel ever written, but it’s like sticking a “Kick me” sign on the book. Readers can’t help wanting to take issue with it.
