Paul Baumann

Article

The Welter of Memory

Born into rural and humble circumstances in the west of Ireland, Edna O’Brien rose to literary fame in 1970s London. She’s still active today.

By Paul Baumann

October 18, 2019

Fiction

Article

Liberator & Tyrant

Educated by Irish Catholic missionaries, Robert Mugabe helped Zimbabwe create a new middle class. But in his refusal to relinquish power, he committed atrocities.

September 19, 2019

Article

The Vocation of Citizenship

Following the news can be exhausting. But that doesn’t absolve us of the duties and responsibilities of participatory democracy.

September 7, 2019

Article

David Brooks Is Wrong

The pundit has accused Democrats of neglecting God, and moral concerns, in favor of strictly material policy proposals. That’s just not true.

August 16, 2019

Article

Body Parts

The veneration of relics is a hard thing for many Catholics of this time and culture to wrap their minds around. But the practice is humanizing, not superstitious.

August 8, 2019

Article

Throwing Money at a Problem

Endless military adventurism abroad and wasteful spending at home has made the United States weaker, not stronger. We need to make better use of the federal budget.

July 27, 2019

Must Reads

Politics

The Future of American Labor

Organized labor was once the backbone of American democracy. A new book argues that the future of collective bargaining requires adaptation to new economies.

By Joseph A. McCartin

October 28, 2019

Religion

Rawls & Theodicy

Did liberalism originate in a kind of theodicy? And is there any reason to suppose that egalitarian liberalism is or has to be theological? Not necessarily.

By Samuel Moyn

October 30, 2019

Culture

Unmagical Realism

Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez wanted to be known more for his journalistic prose than his novels. A new collection reveals the flaws of that desire.

By Catherine Addington

October 31, 2019

Books

Self-Reflection

Recent nonfiction increasingly takes ego as starting point. Jia Tolentino and Leslie Jamison use self-aware essays to examine popular culture and female experience.

By Katherine Lucky

October 9, 2019

Books

Saying the Unsayable

Poet and novelist Fanny Howe is an experimental writer’s experimental writer, the author of dozens of books, one who remains publicly, committedly Catholic.

By Anthony Domestico

September 27, 2019

Collections

Injustice at the Border

The suffering of migrants and refugees on the border cannot be forgotten. Nor can the Trump administration’s deliberate cruelty toward them.

By The Editors

October 28, 2019