Books

Ben Rhodes's new book makes an earnest case for the political power of words. But the degradation of our public life can’t be reversed by rhetoric alone.

Éric Rohmer's only novel throws into relief the psychological acuity of the New Wave director's best films. It's still far from a great work.

Three writers—a Jewish theologian, a legal scholar and intellectual historian, and a Catholic philosopher of religion—reflect on Omri Boehm’s call for a "radical universalism."

"To be well known, even in as small a pond as the intellectual life, can be gratifying. Like most other pleasures, however, it also has its problems."

The memory of almost being hanged by Trump supporters doesn’t appear to have clarified Mike Pence’s conscience.

In his biography of W. H. Auden, Peter Ackroyd tracks the constant tension between public and private life that the poet navigated.

J. D. Vance’s ‘Communion’ and Lena Dunham’s ‘Famesick’ are two sequels to splashy, confessional memoirs by millennial authors. Only one of them is fun to read.

Harriet Clark's debut novel is in explicit conversation with Marilynne Robinson's 'Housekeeping.' Remarkably, it stands up to the comparison.

Jim Thompson, the most "titillatingly depraved crime novelist of the twentieth century," penned iconic psychopathic protagonists and redefined the genre of noir.

Dave Eggers’s latest novel is the meditation of an older, successful artist on what his life might have been if he had been unable to work successfully.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, provocative art came to be leveraged for right-wing political power. We're still dealing with the consequences.

“Yesteryear,” this year’s breakout novel, promises insights into the antifeminist phenomenon, but it doesn’t deliver.

Inger N. I. Kuin’s new book presents Diogenes of Sinope, one of the original Cynics, as a thinker with a “revolutionary” philosophy.

Gabriele Tergit’s 1951 novel 'Effingers' paints a vast and amiably peopled panorama of German-Jewish life at the turn of the twentieth century.

Jay Neugeboren's "Dickensian" childhood eventually led to a prolific writing career.

If reflection, encounter, and devotion are our aims, then printed books and magazines are better tools than digital screens.

To read Ben Lerner's 'Transcription' is to feel wobbles and flickers all around you.

Bernd Roeck traces the roots of the Renaissance as far back as the sixth millennium BCE. His long view of history explores the “why” of Western culture’s success.

Michael Pollan's new book follows the race to uncover the nature of consciousness. He finds many leading scientists dabbling with psychedelics.

Can a theology of mourning keep Christians facing the decline of "the Christian West" from living in the past?

Among twentieth-century British artists, there seemed to be a mad rush to Rome. A new book endeavors to explain this explosion in Catholic conversions.

Why do conservatives blame ‘cultural Marxism’ for nearly everything?

Pope Francis knew that literature is one of the rare human practices still able to establish a common ground.

For Anton Jäger, ours is an era of political excitation absent durable organization. Pope Francis can help us envision a better way forward.

The Editors read about urban gardening, a fantasy baseball association, and the effects of Evangelical fire-and-brimstone rhetoric on children.

Seamus Heaney's imaginative reach for the transcendent made him the model of a religious poet for a secular age.

How did Americans become convinced that social problems are better left to the “free” market than to a democratically accountable government?

In fiction and nonfiction by Black American Catholics, the parochial school looms large as a place of education, formation, and conversion—for good or ill.

Franz Kafka’s sword-wielding Lady Liberty seems like an all-too-fitting symbol of what America has become in Trump’s second term.

Sarah Ruden depicts a St. Perpetua concerned above all with expressing herself. This is a saint who can fit on a coffee mug.

James D. Tabor's new book promises a 'rediscovery' of Mary. His claims are extravagantly speculative.

The postliterate society may also be a postliberal one.

What is the future for literature in a world where machines churn out plausible facsimiles of our most artful human narratives?

… when I told her I was reviewing the Selected Letters of John Updike . Anyone who has had a … that it comes as no surprise to learn, in the Letters, that he was once seriously considered … these seventy years (and 822 pages) worth of letters to parents, editors, wives, …

A posthumous collection of essays from Helen Vendler illustrates to readers exactly what it means to inhabit a poem.

Alfred Tennyson’s faith was shaken as scientific discoveries redefined his world. But a crisis of faith isn’t always a conquest of it.

The books we keep on our shelves represent the best of language, of knowledge, and perhaps even of ourselves.

Udi Greenberg's history of Catholic-Protestant relations promises more than it delivers—and what it delivers is often wanting.

A new biography of Arthur Schopenhauer reveals a more compassionate philosopher, whose ethics of solidarity is one we urgently need now.

When literature was still recognized as an incomparable source of liberty and dignity to millions, the CIA spent decades distributing banned books behind the Iron Curtain.

Poet Dan Chiasson’s ‘Bernie for Burlington’ functions as a triple bildungsroman of Bernie Sanders, the city of Burlington, and Chiasson himself.

William Galston explores how anger, hatred, and lust for domination threaten liberal democracy.

Six stories of mothers, hidden believers, and shame illuminate Endō Shūsaku’s complex vision of Christianity in Japan.

‘The Magic Mountain’ testifies to the power of art to transform life. But before he could complete his masterwork, Thomas Mann had to transform himself.

Mark Hlavacik’s new book on the history of education culture wars says little about schools, and almost nothing about the people who teach and learn there.

Charles Murray’s ‘Taking Religion Seriously’ is not, ultimately, a serious exploration of Christian belief.

Tom Holland’s new translation of Suetonius’s ‘The Lives of the Caesars’ comes at a time when the psychology of tyrants is on all of our minds.

Donald Trump bears an uncanny resemblance to Rex Mottram, the businessman and opportunistic British politician in Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited.’