Books

Article

Share This Protest

While the horizontal nature of social media can be a solution to the problem of state- or elite-controlled media, it presents problems of its own

By Regina Munch

November 6, 2017

Books

Foreign Affairs

Article

Why Don’t They Like Her?

Why did Hillary prompt such rage?

By Leslie Tentler

October 31, 2017

Books

Election 2016

Article

Nothing to Be Done?

The stories of women in ‘The Ninth Hour’ don’t teach easy lessons, but they show how people in hopeless situations do what they can

By Mollie Wilson O’Reilly

October 31, 2017

Books

Religious Life

Article

Tradition You Can Hold

Books have their own fates

By Peter Jeffery

October 26, 2017

Books

Article

Why the Doily?

Once you notice the doilies, you see them everywhere in the wild

By Cassandra Nelson

October 26, 2017

Poetry

Books

Higher Education

Article

After the Thaw

‘A Legacy of Spies,’ which really cannot be understood without reading some of the predecessor novels, is not a match for them

By Katherine A. Powers

October 26, 2017

Books

Feature

An Interview with Carmen Maria Machado

The author discusses good sentences, the story-telling instinct, and this monstrous world we have to make better

By Anthony Domestico

October 9, 2017

Books

Article

Poems Against Paralysis

This is a collection of movement and stillness, of the body and the spirit

By Anthony Domestico

October 9, 2017

Poetry

Books

Spirituality

Article

Both Sides Have Their Reasons

A useful, approachable introduction to the new egalitarian thinking driving so much social and legal conflict over religious liberty today

By Paul Horwitz

October 4, 2017

Sexuality

Domestic Affairs

Article

Ancient Identities

I can’t read the Epistles without wanting to know a lot more—yet feeling stuck. Paula Fredriksen’s book on Apostle Paul’s writings helps

By Sarah Ruden

September 28, 2017

Theology

Article

Tuning In & Out

John Ashbery offers important poetic experiences that traditional poetry has not typically offered

By Frank B. Farrell

September 22, 2017

Poetry

Secularism and Modernity

Article

When Art & Spirit Meet

Paul Lakeland ruminates on the theology of the imagination

By Edward T. Wheeler

September 21, 2017

Books

Arts

Spirituality

Article

Agreeing on How to Disagree

Three philosophers and unlikely coauthors challenge our cultural moment: they opt for mutual understanding over demonization

By Robert K. Vischer

September 20, 2017

Books

Secularism and Modernity

Article

A Church That Can & Did Change

Within the Catholic Church, the “culture wars” have become the “council wars.” The latest entry in these debates is ‘The Reception of Vatican II’

By Richard R. Gaillardetz

September 20, 2017

Vatican II

Books

U.S. Catholicism

Feature

Delight Is Where the Mystery Lies

Anthony Domestico speaks with Alice McDermott about her new novel, the nature of time in Catholicism, and the best kind of reader

By Anthony Domestico

September 13, 2017

Books

U.S. Catholicism

Article

The West Point of Capitalism

Duff McDonald exposes the fraudulence of the Harvard Business School’s pretensions to wisdom

By Eugene McCarraher

September 11, 2017

Article

Manifestations

Literary modernity did not suddenly appear in China in the 1920s

By Nicholas Haggerty

September 7, 2017

Books

Article

Keep Them Poor & Tired

Jeff Guinn’s new biography-cum-history is a study of persuasion and power in Peoples Temple, the twentieth-century socialist cult led by preacher Jim Jones

By Kate Lucky

September 7, 2017

Books

Article

Easy for Him to Say

Rather than addressing poor and middle class families, ‘The Vanishing American Adult’ deals with the challenges of affluence

By Samuel Goldman

August 23, 2017

Books

Economy

Higher Education

Article

Celebration of the World

In their biographical study of the poet Richard Wilbur, Robert Bagg and Mary Bagg analyze both Wilbur and the reasons we are interested in him

By William H. Pritchard

August 23, 2017

Poetry

Books

Article

Worth the Wait

‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ rejects the sublimation of suffering into art

By Randy Boyagoda

August 23, 2017

Books

Article

Giving Grief Its Due

Who better to shepherd us through reams of writing about death than Edwidge Danticat?

By Valerie Sayers

August 23, 2017

Books

End-of-life Issues

Article

An Interview with Lawrence Joseph

The poet Lawrence Joseph discusses the work of composition, violence, and poetry as an act of resistance

By Anthony Domestico

August 22, 2017

Poetry

Secularism and Modernity

War and Peace

Books

Article

If They Could Turn Back Time

Mark Lilla turns his attention to reactionary intellectuals and movements that nostalgically turn to the past to impeach the present

By Thomas Albert Howard

July 31, 2017

Books

Article

Fame Is Fickle

MacKinlay Kantor and his magnum opus are largely forgotten. Tom Shroder dives the legacy of his grandfather, who was once a big deal

By Robert K. Landers

July 31, 2017

Books

Article

Read Millennials’ Novels, Not Think Pieces

Three recent books do more to address the issues young adults face than any “millennial think piece” ever could

By Anthony Domestico

July 31, 2017

Secularism and Modernity

Books

Article

The Last Earnest Catholic Novel?

Earnest religious works exist as spiritual stories in a secular world, and not as stories in which belief is mere symbol

By Nick Ripatrazone

July 18, 2017

Books

Secularism and Modernity

U.S. Catholicism

Article

His Bleak Materials

Characters in the fiction of J. F. Powers reveal the limitations and consolations of belief, and his work affirms his faith even as it challenges it

By Jeffrey Meyers

July 18, 2017

Article

Lost Amid Anxiety

While most public considerations of terrorism are colored by nefarious political ambitions, this is a vital work on jihadism in the West

By Cole Stangler

July 13, 2017

Terrorism

Middle East

Muslim-Christian Relations

Foreign Affairs

Article

The Most Catholic of Catholic Families

Poet Patricia Lockwood considers the perils of having a Catholic priest for a dad

By Katie Daniels

July 11, 2017

Books

Priesthood

Article

Lie, Memory

Can we trust our memories and what's in our heads? Dan Chaon's novel ‘Ill Will’ pursues this question to thrilling effect

By Dominic Preziosi

July 10, 2017

Books

Fiction

Article

A Defiant Imperfection

Is Elif Batuman's vivid first novel “autofiction”?

By Phil Christman

July 10, 2017

Books

Fiction

Higher Education

Feature

An Interview with George Saunders

Anthony Domestico talks with author George Saunders about his new novel, habits of mind, the after-life, and what America is about

By Anthony Domestico

July 10, 2017

Books

Article

A Short Story by Alice McDermott

‘There is a hunger. It was a lesson she had learned and then forgotten across the years...’ An excerpt from Alice McDermott’s forthcoming novel

By Alice McDermott

July 7, 2017

Fiction

Books

Feature

Prophet of Harlem

Besides Claude McKay’s status as a canonical poet of the Harlem Renaissance, there’s another side of him that rarely comes into public view

By Griffin Oleynick

July 7, 2017

Article

An Interview with Francis Spufford

There’s more life and variety in a single page of Francis Spufford’s prose than there is in many full-length books

By Anthony Domestico

June 28, 2017

Books

Fiction

Article

Two Poems by Michael Cadnum

"The garden at night coy shadow, / fishpond thick with softly / gleaming algae."

By Michael Cadnum

June 26, 2017

Poetry

Article

Poem | St. Joseph's Cemetery

"I am reminded / how rooted I am / to the ground of my being"

By John Perrault

June 21, 2017

Poetry

Article

Shop Talk

In ‘The Face of Water,’ Sarah Ruden aims to convey the intimate, humble, intrusive, and inescapably rude process of translating the Bible

By Jack Miles

June 21, 2017

Books

Article

Losing His Way

J. M. Coetzee’s ‘The Schooldays of Jesus’ doesn't offer readers a point

By Cassandra Nelson

June 21, 2017

Books

Fiction

Article

‘Belief Does Not Embarrass Me’

Allegra Goodman talks about her new novel, Jane Austen and George Eliot, video games, and ‘believing in God and being a Jew’

By Anthony Domestico

June 8, 2017

Books

Web Exclusive

Spirituality

Article

Double Focus

How modern poetry must face history—and what lies beyond history

By Anthony Domestico

May 30, 2017

Poetry

Books

Article

I Don’t Feel Your Pain

Paul Bloom’s book rejects the assumption that empathy is either a strong motivator of moral goodness or a proper guide to moral decision making

By Stephen J. Pope

May 30, 2017

Social Justice

Books

Ethics

Article

Dorothy Day’s ‘Second Conversion’?

Who was Fr. John J. Hugo and how might a study of Hugo shed light on the “public theology” that holds sway in American Catholic theology today?

By Patrick Jordan

May 30, 2017

Books

U.S. Catholicism

Social Justice

Article

Negotiating Surrender

In ‘The End of White Christian America,’ Robert P. Jones captures people moving from denial to acceptance of the passing of Christianity’s dominance

By Michael Peppard

May 24, 2017

Secularism and Modernity

Books

U.S. Catholicism

Article

The Dean Looks Back

Mark Roche’s book is relevant to the discussion of the woes of Catholic higher education over the past 50 years, but it has ambitions beyond this discussion

By Bernard G. Prusak

May 18, 2017

Higher Education

U.S. Catholicism

Books

Article

Religion Booknotes: Summer 2017

Luke Timothy Johnson reviews books on (perhaps) the world's oldest church, evolution and the Bible, the fear of God, and the relations between different monotheisms

By Luke Timothy Johnson

May 18, 2017

Books

Theology

Ecumenism

Article

Infallible Saintmakers?

Donald S. Prudio's book explores whether papal canonization decisions are not indeed infallible in nature

By Francis Oakley

May 17, 2017

Books

Article

The Laureate of Loneliness

Peter Parker provides an introduction to the poet A. E. Housman that goes deep “into the heart of England”

By William H. Pritchard

May 17, 2017

Books

Poetry

Article

Behold, the Jihad of Freedom

‘America’s Dream Palace’ describes the collaboration between U.S. policymakers largely ignorant of the Middle East and the entities to which they turned for advice

By Andrew J. Bacevich

May 10, 2017

Books

Middle East