Andrew Cockburn's 'Kill Chain' examines the disastrous political effects of the U.S. military's targeted assassination practices--and the true motives behind them.
Unlike past Eurocentric taxonomies of world religions, the latest Norton anthology aims to let six major, living, international religions speak...in their own words.
Iranian author Azar Nafiri defends the value of canonical American literature—its imagination and humanity—against Common Core, market analyses, and Babbitt.
Pinckney's short history deals with basic things—Reconstruction, Ku Klux Klan terrorism, crude political machinations like Plessy v Ferguson—white people can forget.
The pro-British kings archeologist-turned-spy-turned-colonel T.E. Lawrence helped establish in Arabia, Iraq, and Transjordan made "Arab unity" a "madman's notion."
Is humanity better or worse off believing in the sacred? Kitcher has not provided new reasons for declaring the death of God, but he certainly makes it seem foolish.
William Deresiewicz not only critiques the idea that college education is about learning marketable skills; he also revives the quest for meaning, self, and soul.
This integrative, enjoyable "book for beginners" still may hold surprises for scholars: nuns absolving sins, petitioners humiliating saints, a woman pope, and more.
Mailer, Trilling, Macdonald, Kazin, Maxwell, Bellow, Auden, O'Hara—men with public moral concerns, who seized power to shape American literature. But who were they?
Baxter reads fiction to “see bad stuff happening.” He writes characters who get into serious trouble, and face their own "human wreckage" at someone else's request.
Kevin Kruse convincingly claims that the association of patriotism with Christianity comes from a libertarian reaction in American business to the New Deal.
“New atheists” like Richard Dawkins have made a splash with aggressive attacks on religion. But Michael Ruse, philosopher and reflective atheist, is not impressed.
Posner’s attempt to intertwine Vatican finance with a history of the papacy—"rampant corruption, pervasive nepotism, unbridled debauchery"—isn't neutral, or correct.
How can we choose to have agency over our lives when we are bombarded by choices? Crawford proposes a way to reclaim your attention span and thereby reclaim yourself
The French writer Henri Ghéon lost his faith at fifteen and regained it after living through war. His 'Born in Battle' is a powerful account of religious rebirth.
Readers expecting a tour de force of church history shouldn't. The question for Wills is this: Why do we need the church or Pope Francis to remind us of God’s love?
Through the eyes of a middle-aged alcoholic grandson of an Auschwitz survivor, Michel Raub's fifth novel contemplates the infinite ways humans torment each other.
Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder's correspondence narrates the tension between a place-based way of life and the travel schedule of a prominent writer, beautifully.
Samet’s memoir has a bone to pick with American society and the Army itself—both, she believes, failed her former West Point cadets, soldiers who never returned.
In Matthiessen's final book, a professor spends a week at Auschwitz with aggrieved Jews, guilt-ridden Christians, observant Buddhists, and analytical secularists.
If you can’t choose to have a child the way you choose dessert, how can you choose rationally? L.A. Paul reveals the problem of foresight and modern decision-making.
In exposing Pope Francis's accomplishments, Austen Ivereigh presents “the concrete Catholic thing” as something that has the power to create true solidarity.
Tushnet's memoir illuminates a theology of friendship, the outward-looking call to love and serve, devotions to troubled saints, and a healthy anti-clericalism.
How can it be true both that a person can be virtuous regardless of faith, and that faith is crucial for how we live? David Decosimo presents "prophetic Thomism."
In Pfau's account, when 13th century Franciscan theologian William of Ockham separated reason from will, it was the beginning of the modern evacuation of the self.
The Catholic painter Peter Paul Rubens presents a particular challenge to classification—decorative, theatrical, busy, pagan, and only superficially Christian.
Written before he and seven fellow monks were kidnapped and beheaded in 1996, this personal journal reflects story of Algeria in crisis and courageous spirituality.
Updike: Antithesis to today’s literary culture. Serenity, not struggle, his hallmark; praise, not pungency, his métier. And not one hour of writer's block.
Ancient religions that have survived centuries are often the most persecuted: Mandaeans, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Druze, Samaritans, Copts, and the Kalasha.
Dinaw Mengestu's novel considers what it is to walk around in an America that holds no promise for you, while Matt Fraction elevates the comic book to new heights.
Readers interested in Russia and Ukraine, CIA analysts and Soviets, Doctor Zhivago censorship, and more will enjoy these fascinating histories of the Cold War.
Politicians and pundits regularly misapply Smith’s most famous metaphor, turning the “invisible hand” into an embodiment of the virtues of an unfettered market.
To her fans—and there are many, from critic James Wood to Barack Obama—Robinson shows that old-fashioned virtues like seriousness and simplicity are still virtues.
No one predicted that the most striking literary phenomenon of the early twenty-first century would be this six-volume novel by a Norwegian writer, about himself.
