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.
Spanning almost James Agee's entire lifetime, these letters between author and his priest cover alcohol, God, poetry, childhood, and a “mouthful of sweet potato.”
Set on present day Staten Island Eddie Joyce's 'Small Mercies' traces the effect of 9/11 on the families of people living in “the servants’ quarters of New York."
Frank Bruni challenges elitist assumptions about what "counts" as a worthy education, and Fareed Zakaria defends the usefulness and versatility of the liberal arts.
Celan’s work has prompted an often reverential critical response. But his poetry is always difficult and sometimes agonizing; reading it provides no easy pleasures.
Narrated by the nameless victim's brother, Kamal Daoud's novel asks: Did Camus intend to use the Algerian murder victim in 'The Stranger' as a disposable prop?
Chen Guangcheng's condemnation of the Chinese state is told through his story of legal activism, resulting torture, trial, house arrest, and an escape to the U.S.
Biographer Randy Boyagoda paints Richard John Neuhaus as an unusually ambitious and politically engaged priest as public intellectual—but is his narrative too tidy?
Claudia Rankine’s 'Citizen' and Jeffery Renard Allen’s 'Song of the Shank' both take up the issue of race in America in jagged and beautiful poetry and prose.
Readers write in on how academic, humanistic, and prophetic cultures should be balanced, when kids should be confirmed, and why nothing's better than the Eucharist.
Laura Swan does a good job of explaining both the beguines’ spiritual practices in the context of their own times and how their continuing legacy affects us today.
Brooks thinks character is what’s missing in our self-centered society, yet has written a self-help book for an age he believes values the self much too highly.
Even if her new novel gives us pleasure, shouldn't we be able to remember Harper Lee as a member of one of the most unusual groupings in literary history?
Anne Enright's new novel suggests something simple—family, for good or ill, keeps forming us even when we try to escape it—but her prose constantly surprises.
In her new book, Jane Maienschein lays out the history of embryonic science—going back to Aristotle—hoping to answer an old question: When does a human life begin?
Paul Moses's history of Irish-Italian relations in 19th century New York delves into the causes for "race war" between the immigrant groups and how they overcame it.
Langdon Hammer's biography of poet and writer James Merrill is "wholly definitive" in scope, and threaded throughout with Merrill’s brilliant, always enlivening wit.
If you ask me, being a writer is a little like falling in love. No matter how uncomplicated it seems at the start, it is always complicated. The trick is to persist.
Ireland's fiction laureate talks about sex and death in Ireland; Pope John Paul II's 1979 visit to the country; Kafka and kids; and her new novel, 'The Green Road.'
