An outdoor manger at St. Takla Maronite Catholic Church in Beirut. (CNS photo/Johnny Antoun)

Christmas Critics

By The Editors

November 29, 2019

Article

Tales of Assimilation

There’s a common thread that runs through these stories of first-generation Americans: their journeys are aided by flawed, limited, transcendent love.

December 6, 2019

Article

Still Lives

Two large-scale projects by contemporary artists help us see animals as individuals with faces, names, and stories of their own.

November 29, 2019

Article

The Fiction of Isolation

This year I read several novels set in war zones, where the Christmas message of God’s mercy can be especially hard to hear.

December 11, 2019

Article

Nostalgia & Resilience

Refugees and migrants encounter homesickness as they struggle to establish identities in unfamiliar, often unwelcoming territory. Three books show how they do it.

December 20, 2019

Article

‘It’s Complicated’

As anyone who uses Facebook knows, we too quickly explain, meaning explain away, the world and each other. It’s not so simple; three books help complicate things.

By David Mills

November 29, 2019

Fiction

Nonfiction

Saints

Article

‘True’ Stories?

Fiction is hard. Nonfiction is hard for different reasons: the need to ensure accuracy, the risk of angering your subjects. These books succeed brilliantly.

December 19, 2019

Must Reads

Politics

Engaging Confederate Nostalgia

For those of us who have a visceral objection to Confederate Memorial Day, how should we engage a worldview that embraces the mythology of the Lost Cause?

By Richard Brown

May 10, 2023

Religion

St. Philip Neri’s Eucharistic Joy

Philip Neri is just the kind of saint we need: a model of lightness of spirit, divine laughter, and extraordinary ordinariness.

By John Rodden

May 26, 2023

Culture

Reckoning With Birth

Birth is one of humanity’s most under-explored subjects. Minimizing birth diminishes one of the greatest powers humans have had: the creation of life itself.

By Jennifer Banks

May 26, 2023