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Endings are times of reckoning. Now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, it seems an appropriate moment to consider their costs. What have these...

Christmas Critics 2012

Sobering histories, radiant memoirs, style-bending poetry, and a biography of Branch Rickey: These are just some of the works discussed by our 2012 Christmas...

Christmas Critics

Dan BarryThe books beside my bed, stacked like bricks laid by an addled mason, suggest that I possess either a broad curiosity or an inability to focus. Where were...

Beginners’ Luck

Rules of CivilityAmor TowlesViking, $26.95, 352 pp.Ten Thousand SaintsEleanor HendersonEcco, $26.99, 400 pp.In 1947, E. B. White published an unusual travel essay...

Religion Booknotes

The Future of Christian TheologyDavid F. FordWiley-Blackwell, $34.95, 239 pp. David F. Ford, a theologian at Cambridge University and author of the excellent...

An Ignatian Spirit

To write a biography of Avery Dulles (1918–2008) is to enter the vitriolic conflict over interpretations of the legacy of Vatican II, the current state and future...

Out of the Ashes

Postwar A History of Europe Since 1945 Tony Judt Penguin Press, $39.95, 896 pp. In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (in English, The Deputy...

Salinger & His Critics

This essay appeared in the October 25, 1963, issue of Commonweal.As Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour—An Introduction slips off the best-seller lists...

Secular Sabbath

Over the past two decades, few writers have charmed as many critics and readers as the British novelist Ian McEwan. He is probably best known for his 2001 novel...

Assessing Blame

Human Smoke The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization Nicholson Baker Simon & Schuster, $16, 576 pp. Refugees and Rescue The Diaries and...
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