Books

There’s an evident cliquishness and wonkishness in the study of manuscripts—but the manuscript club need not be a closed one.

Elizabeth Cullinan's recently reissued collection paints a messy, rich, and tragic portrait of Irish-American womanhood.

The alienation between people and their environment is never total—a lesson Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s latest book seems to have altogether lost.

Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey was a born showman—and a born opportunist.

Timothy Morton, one of the most influential environmental philosophers of the past two decades, has found Jesus.

Jason Blakely treats ideology as an orienting worldview, something none of us can do without. But this understanding neglects the role of power.

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.

The eminent philosopher Charles Taylor discusses Romantic poetry's response to modern disenchantment.

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn’s memoir is a testament to the depth of a daughter’s love—and an act of faith in our better human instincts.

J. D. Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy,' reconsidered.

Christopher Hitchens was a champion detractor, a terrific hater, and always more fun to read when he was denouncing than when he was praising.

Two excellent new books defend the liberal project with wisdom and clarity. So why do they yield such little hope?

'The Novelist' insists that the question must be: “How can I live a meaningful life?” and not, “Is life really meaningful?”

Spencer Reece's latest collection of poems combines moments of real theological profundity with moments of inanity.

John Ganz's new book explores how the identity crises of the 1990s produced our dark political moment.

Should we put our highest hopes in changing the internet or in changing ourselves?

Judith Butler's 'Who’s Afraid of Gender?' is a rambling diatribe.

In Jakob Ziguras’s newest collection of poetry, the past and present of Venice mix and match.

As the promise of endless material abundance breaks, the resilience of the peasant may no longer seem as irrelevant as it once did.

Kevin Barry's latest novel, 'The Heart in Winter,' is a funny, devastating ride through an imagined Old West.

Like a great novelist, Freud exposes our complexities with honesty and understanding and without malice.

In her reading of Genesis, Marilynne Robinson honors humanness while affirming the divine.

… slowly pulls back and we see that the woman, Carmen, isn’t alone: she’s surrounded by other … After almost accidentally shooting his wife, Carmen, he shouts, “The guerillas have a spy … Guatemala’s Ixil Maya population. That’s what Carmen was praying over at the film’s opening, …

Percival Everett's 'James' retells the story of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' from the perspective of the escaped slave, Jim.

Elsa Morante captures the loves and tragedies of twentieth-century women.

In Álvaro Enrigue's exuberant new novel, history is truly up for grabs.

David Yezzi makes sense of Anthony Hecht's opulent poetry in 'Late Romance.'

Griffin Oleynick and Anthony Domestico revive their celebrated summer readings and screenings series.

Theologian Brian D. Robinette has gifted us with a thoughtful work about God’s utterly gratuitous gift of creation, redemption, and fulfillment in Christ.

In 'Slow Productivity,' Cal Newport advises individuals to become more productive by shifting work onto others.

In 'Zero at the Bone,' Christian Wiman presses poetry into the service of faith.

Christ sacrificed himself out of solidarity with our plight, because he wanted to give us the means to become like God.

"It’s not that the critiques Sarah McCammon documents in 'The Exvangelicals' are all wrong. It’s that they are, by this point, very familiar."

The late poet Saskia Hamilton's book 'All Souls' is a meditation of "tentative hope," reckoning with her own imminent death.

Branko Milanovic's new book charts an evolution in economic thinking about inequality across two centuries.

Clarice Lispector's 'The Apple in the Dark' wrestles with the limits of language, seeking language to crack the glass between us and reality.

Hanif Abdurraqib's new book explores the meaning of basketball greatness.

It's hard to imagine any writer today commanding the kind of popular attention Jimmy Breslin once did.

To what extent is the fate of the planet in the hands of asset managers?

Why haven’t the newcomers to suburbia, especially families of color, experienced the affluence that previous generations found there?

In his debut novel, Vinson Cunningham locates Obama's power in his opacity.

… Carmen M. … Nanko-Fernández …

Judith A. Merkle's book asks: What is the role of religious life is in an increasingly secular, disaffiliated world?

In his deeply researched account of Japanese war-crimes trials, Gary Bass suggests that the liberal international order in Asia was stillborn.

In 'Why Teach Philosophy in Schools?' Jane Gatley seeks to “provide a failsafe argument for including philosophy on school curricula.”

The Oxford English Dictionary is a monumental achievement, the product of devoted obsessives for whom words mean even more than perhaps they should.

Greek works of science, philosophy, and literature continued to enrich civilization long after Rome’s might had eclipsed that of Greece.

There are two difficulties with writing about Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. One is saying anything fresh about them. The other is seeing them at all.

In the Irish War for Independence, it was never certain who was your enemy and who were your allies.