Books

Article

Just Like Us

… What’s the point of Great Books? There’s never been a straight answer. Leo … movie adaptation of the Odyssey , this is a good time to reconsider what we’re supposed to … But this “gnawing fear that there remain challenges yet to be conquered” …

By Charles McNamara

September 28, 2026

Article

Right Up Against It

Lawrence Joseph's poetry gives form to a beauty that is still somehow possible in our precise and horrible moment.

By Anthony Domestico

September 23, 2026

Article

Getting In Over Your Head

Musician and science writer Jonathan Meiburg speaks with Commonweal about creativity, ignorance, and wonder.

By Robert Rubsam

September 15, 2026

Article

Publishing for a World Church

"My time at Orbis Books was centered on the belief that theology could be a force, a source of life, and a resource in the struggle for a better world."

By Robert Ellsberg

September 8, 2026

Article

Participants, not Prosecutors

We don't need uncritical reverence toward the Western intellectual tradition. But we do need to read it with generosity, rather than hardened suspicion.

By Christopher Celenza

September 3, 2026

Higher Education

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King Joe

Sometimes described as a “Black Moses,” boxer Joe Louis was a lodestar for his African American brothers and sisters.

By Gordon Marino

September 2, 2026

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Books in Brief

The Editors read about Catholic pacifist Gordon Zahn, yuppies taking over the city, and "the objects we call bibles."

By The Editors

September 1, 2026

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Literature Is Not About You

Reading great novels should be an encounter that makes you more human, not more productive.

By Drew Calvert

August 27, 2026

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Copy and Paste

America's nineteenth-century country editors are fun to read about, but they shouldn’t be regarded as a foundation for solving today’s crisis in local news coverage.

By Paul Moses

August 27, 2026

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Politics and the Limits of Language

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.

By Drew Calvert

August 17, 2026

Article

Seeds of Something New

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.

By Tim Markatos

August 12, 2026

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A 'Radical Universalism'?

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."

By The Editors

August 11, 2026

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Self-Evident Truths?

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."

By The Editors

August 11, 2026

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A Lesson Wasted

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

By Pedro L. Gonzalez

August 10, 2026

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Whose German Idealism?

In 'Radical Universalism,' Omri Boehm fails to explain why we should listen to Kant instead of Hegel and Marx.

By Samuel Moyn

August 10, 2026

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Bloody Certitudes

Omri Boehm’s politics suffer from an excess of certitude and righteousness, a deficit of lament, and a proclivity for and ease with lethal violence.

By Paul J. Griffiths

August 8, 2026

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Civil Style

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

By Gus Mitchell

August 8, 2026

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A Fairy Tale Ending?

Trump is the sort of miser you come across in some especially ghoulish fairy tale. Will he ever get his comeuppance?

By Paul Baumann

August 6, 2026

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Imitation of Life

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.

By Dorothy Fortenberry

August 5, 2026

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Released from Countdowns

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

By Anthony Domestico

August 4, 2026

Article

Close to the Bone

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

By Patrick Preziosi

August 4, 2026

Death and Dying

Secularism and Modernity

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Why Abraham?

Omri Boehm looks to Abraham for biblical evidence of philosophical universalism. His reconstruction is speculative, at best.

By Shai Held

August 4, 2026

Article

‘More Broken Glass’

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.

By Gideon Leek

August 3, 2026

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The Culture-War Factory

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.

By Mark Athitakis

July 29, 2026

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Why We Love to Hate Tradwives

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

By Heidi Schlumpf

July 23, 2026

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Say Everything

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

By Costica Bradatan

June 30, 2026

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Distressingly Resonant

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

By Morten Høi Jensen

June 30, 2026

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Trouble in Paradise

Chris Jennings's book about violent Christian separatists traces the fracturing of American society. But was America ever whole before, and can it ever be now?

By Tom Deignan

June 29, 2026

Article

The Before and the After

Rachel Goldberg-Polin's son was abducted and killed by Hamas. Her memoir vividly chronicles her bereavement and activism in his name.

By Nava Grant

June 25, 2026

Death and Dying

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Legends and Long Shots

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

By Paul Moses

June 25, 2026

Domestic Affairs

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'No, But I Skimmed It'

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

By Joel Halldorf

June 25, 2026

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Caught on the Hinge

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

By Anthony Domestico

June 24, 2026

Article

Beyond Couch and Clinic

The late Robert Coles spent years meeting subjects where they were, from the first integrated classrooms to migrant farms to the Appalachian mountains.

By Kenneth L. Woodward

June 16, 2026

Higher Education

Article

Why the West?

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.

By Tom Verde

June 16, 2026

Article

Consciousness Researchers Are Tripping

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

By Kit Wilson

May 26, 2026

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Love Without Reward

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

By Paul Lakeland

May 25, 2026

Death and Dying

Article

Blessings & Curses in Disguise

In the short stories of Louise Erdrich's 'Python's Kiss,' our expectations are constantly upended—but we always remain in the hands of an expert storyteller.

By Michael O'Connell

May 25, 2026

Domestic Affairs

Article

The Ownerist Society

Accumulating wealth is now the way many people seek to belong—to "buy" their place in the world. But an extrinsic source of belonging will always be fragile.

By Ian Marcus Corbin

May 25, 2026

Secularism and Modernity

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‘The Real Thing’

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.

By Anthony Domestico

May 19, 2026

Article

The Serpent in the Garden

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

By Matt McManus

May 4, 2026

Article

The Loom of Literature

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

By Antonio Spadaro

April 30, 2026

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A Crisis of Belonging

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

By Daniele Palmer

April 29, 2026

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Dancing on a Volcano

In Ian Buruma’s telling, Berlin during World War II was a time of contradictions: hedonism, escapism, heroism, and compromise.

By Bryn Stole

April 28, 2026

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Books in Brief

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

By The Editors

April 28, 2026

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‘Against Your Better Judgment’

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

By Kevin T. O’Connor

April 27, 2026

Article

Keep It Private

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

By George Scialabba

April 27, 2026

Domestic Affairs

Article

The ‘Great Sort’ in American Religion

Political scientist and statistician Ryan Burge discusses polarization, declining institutions, and the future of religion in the United States.

By Heidi Schlumpf

April 27, 2026

U.S. Catholicism

Article

A Proper Education

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.

By Aaron Robertson

April 27, 2026

U.S. Catholicism

Article

The Torch or the Sword?

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

By John Rodden

April 27, 2026

Article

Perpetua Adoration

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

By Eve Tushnet

April 27, 2026

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