Adam Sisman’s new biography of le Carré—cartoonist, actor, mimic, linguist, expert skier,and spy—is intelligent, thoroughly researched, and tediously repetitive.
There is no release or relief in poet Dan Burt’s story, just a stark and pervading sense of emotional sclerosis from the streets of Philly to the halls of Cambridge.
Barry’s new novel—featuring John Lennon as protagonist—meditates on place, grief, and longing, ranging across a century’s worth of literary and popular references.
Rather than a triumph, Dionne says “the history of contemporary American conservatism is a story of disappointment and betrayal.” But is his diagnosis correct?
A Darwinian view argues that genes themselves are selfish. An evolutionary biologist in Darwin’s camp, David Wilson wishes to refute this argument once and for all.
Fleming Rutledge probes “the strange new world of the Bible” to its mysterious and scandalous depth in the crucifixion of God’s son, and diagnoses our deepest need.
The stories in Colum McCann’s collection each have thirteen sections that build slowly, surely toward denouement. By the end, a shift in perspective has taken place.
Many take Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ as an American affirmation to choose one’s own path. But in David Orr’s reading the twenty-line poem is instead about limits.
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.
Why are there more versions of ‘Anna Karenina’ (1878) in 2016? According to some translators “the best” will never be available and so translation must continue.
Before the “Declaration on Religious Freedom” was created, church leaders warned that embracing religious freedom would betray the church’s doctrinal heritage.
Paul Lisicky’s book is a memoir of love and friendship, and how sometimes their boundaries blur. But it’s also a book about literary ambition and its discontents.
Jack Mulder seeks to “explain why the Catholic story captivated, and still captivates” so as to enhance Christian dialogue. He succeeds in only one of those aims.
How to describe the almost-madness of loss? Macdonald uses hawk-taming, Smith “ordinary” poetry about death, and Chapman “Christian love of existence.”
Luke Timothy Johnson provides an important alternative to the “theologies of the body” on offer among those thinkers elaborating themes fashioned by John Paul II.
It is the purpose Michael N. McGregor’s biography of Robert Lax to move him out from under the shadow of Merton’s personality and give him his own place in the sun.
Terry Eagleton gives a witty and insightful tour of hope’s complicated linguistic terrain that carefully avoids proposing some once-and-for-all grand Theory of Hope.
Writers engage biblical texts ranging from the Psalms to a single parable.Their essays are wildly heterogeneous in tone and method, kind of like the Bible itself.
Frederica Mathewes-Green on Eastern Orthodoxy; Brian E. Daley and Paul Kolbert on Psalm interpretations, Philip Jenkins on lost gospels; James O’Donnell on pagans
Philip Jenkins sets out to demolish a popular theological myth that the second-century apocryphal writings were unknown until recently; he makes a convincing case.
Paul Misner’s new book goes beyond social and labor movements in the church to deal with papal and episcopal action vis-à-vis the great powers between 1914 and 1965.
For scholars interested in the history of theology and biblical interpretation, these twelve short essays offer new approaches to Psalms, moral philosophy, and more.
Mathewes-Green, a convert from the Episcopal tradition, focuses on Orthodoxy as a path to God and uses the actions and prayers of the liturgy as a basis for theology
Bruce Chatwin casts travel as an act of sacrifice, of “sloughing-off” the world and discovering the self anew. His work contains moments of aching spirituality.
Readers write in to disagree with Jonathan Haidt’s “moral foundations theory” and share enthusiasm for an historic liqueur made by monks from honey and herbs.
Editors Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon contend that Nietzsche’s impassioned critique of 19th century education sheds light on the decline of education in the 21st.
Scott Shane’s telling of the U.S.-born Muslim preacher-turned-terrorist and his surveillance by the FBI reveals that the calculus for terrorism is political.
In his latest, Thomas Mallon turns real-life figures like Nixon, Reagan, and Nancy Reagan’s astrologer into characters as skillfully as he creates fictional ones.
Andrew Hartman’s argument is that while “cultural conflict persists,” it has come to partake of a highly ironic flavor—and continues to ignore economic inequality.
