“Metaphysics.” The word unexpectedly provided me with new reflections on the deepest meaning of the birth of Jesus and the Incarnation—the seen and the unseen.
Considering how religiously diverse and culturally cosmopolitan its cities were before WWI, few could have foreseen today’s calamity for the Middle Eastern region.
Konrad Jarausch’s history of Europe’s recent past pursues a fundamental question—what is modernization? And is modern progress liberating for all, or still “dark”?
In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s interpretation of race in America, hope doesn’t fit into the narrative—something James Baldwin, to whom he’s compared, wouldn’t leave out.
What fascinates Maraniss about Detroit more than its ruin is how central its story is to the broader course of U.S. history—Motown, the local Mob, the auto industry.
‘Go Set Watchman’ shows that though Atticus Finch defended a black man in court, he was still a man of his time—on the white citizens council, resisting integration.
John Boyne’s new novel pays attention to the circumstances of priestly life in real-world Catholic Ireland, asking: How does one be a good priest under suspicion?
Anahid Nersessian argues that Romanticism dramatizes the “desirability of constraint.” Her book on how British Romantics imagined “utopia” powerfully does the same.
If today the world and the self are devalued, as Walker Percy has suggested, art—particularly the novel— can awaken the reader to their recovery from ‘4 p.m. blues.’
Historical reminders of how the Mediterranean connects Europe, Asia, and Africa at least as often as it separates the three continents from one another.
Girlhoods, boyhoods, childhoods, “freindships”: Youth is the setting (and subject) in works by Jane Austen, J.M. Coetzee, Michael Ondaatje, and Leo Tolstoy.
These books offer two rewards: a lot of fascinating information, and an opportunity to think hard about history and being human. But they prompt some questions too.
The case for “youthful credulity” when reading; Don DeLillo’s moral but discomforting vision; a new translation of Julian of Norwich’s ‘Revelations of Divine Love.’
A biographical novel for Thomas Hardy fans; a theory on how Christianity came to dominate Europe; short poems; and the fascinating (true) tale of a house in Germany.
Donaldson’s willingness to admit imperfections in his work and the mistakes he’s made in pursuit of his subjects makes him a winning guide to literary biography.
Mary Ziegler’s account of the “lost” history of Roe may surprise even the closest (and oldest) observers of the battles following the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
James Booth examines Philip Larkin’s life and work. Colm Tóibín writes on Elizabeth Bishop. James Wood looks at religious and secular modes of narration in novels.
As a result of a recent vogue for feeling culturally embattled, the word “Christian” now is seen less as identifying an ethic, and more as identifying a demographic.
John Norris’s new biography of Pulitzer prize-winning political journalist (and Commonweal Catholic) Mary McGrory is engaging, carefully researched, and sympathetic.
An account of the sexual abuse scandal at the elite Horace Mann school, noteworthy for the contrast with common impressions of Catholic institutional environments.
In “Christian Human Rights,” Samuel Moyn concedes that the modern human-rights movement is untethered from its Christian origins. Is this something to worry about?
You don’t need to be a thespian to appreciate James Shapiro’s “Year of Lear”—a brilliant, meticulously researched history of social tensions that inspired the play.
While Franzen’s natural mode as writer is one of confident high spirits, in “Purity” his view of people is steeped in pessimism, and his characters are miserable.
Stone’s characters were human, and humans screw up; there wasn’t much to do about that except to situate the culprits in clarifying narratives of moral scrutiny.
Peter Mitchell’s take on Charles Curran and the “dissident theologian” strike at Catholic University in 1967 presents a conspiracy so big it’s literally incredible.
Readers write to petition for women writers, praise Luke Timothy Johnson’s essay on Thomas Merton, take issue with Andrew Bacevich, and clarify education goals.
For Jon D. Levenson, the main form that the love of God in Judaism takes—and, by extension, the form that mature adult love ought to take—is covenantal love.
The strangeness of Freeman’s title commands attention; Kaplan constructs a microhistory of religious conflict; Lipton presents a learned study; Manseau on diversity.
Does Montaigne resemble the contemporary essayist who writes about faith? The short answer is that he does not—at least not in easily recognizable ways.
Why has there never been a culture of accountability in the American university? James Keenan, SJ believes the teachers of ethics should practice what they preach.
In this collection of essays, authors draw on “Theology of the Body” to present the Church as a place where women’s leadership can flourish. The results are mixed.
Set in bombed-out Berlin of 1945, Petzold’s ‘Phoenix’ questions who was guilty, and of what, in the daily workings of the Holocaust—and will there be a reckoning?
The result of her years-long quest to find fellow victims of smear campaigns, Dreger’s ‘Galileo’s Middle Finger’ reveals a problem larger than political correctness.
Centered around the missing bomber pilot from ‘Life After Life,’ Atkinson’s ‘A God in Ruins’ examines the interplay of real life and the life of the imagination.
