“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.
The body of Padre Pio was recently paraded through Rome in a glass coffin, followed by thousands. What is it that makes people gather around a desiccated corpse?
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.
My mother was like a hermit crab who was busy moving out of its shell, and then only the shell was left. “Enjoy it, dear,” she said. She took to staring at the sky.
...then my attention came to rest again / on the reaching-me-clearly breaking / voice of a woman testifying // she thought fireworks / were going off in a theater...
A reader writes in about being “bombarded with everything from Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Aquinas” in college, and a law professor corrects the editors on labor laws.
Michael Moore tours the social democracies of Europe, assembling a piecemeal progressive utopia and contrasting it with the bleakness on our side of the Atlantic.
Antonin Scalia’s impact on the Court was mixed. He will be remembered more for the flamboyance of his dissents than for the reach of his majority opinions.
Imaginary American flags, ballots on sticky notes, turkey dressing sandwiches, and beer: Two Iowa caucus-goers with their first-hand accounts of democracy in action.
