Imagine a feasta symposium really in the ancient Greek sense of the wordin which the aim is not merely to enjoy good food and drink but also to share in thoughtful conversation The guest of honor a distinguished Christian thinker is the main course but other luminaries are present occasionall

If you wanted to explain to a visiting Martian what the old American WASP aristocracy was all about you could find worse examples than Roger Angell First there is the pedigree one ancestor Captain John Sheple was captured as a teenager by Abenaki Indians in a raid on Groton Mass in 1694 A

In 1969 the Apollo astronaut Edwin Aldrin described the ldquo magnificent desolation rdquo of the moon As the United States reflects on its lengthening wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this Veterans Day the issue of how most appropriately to honor soldiers who have died in battle is elevated profoun

This memoir begins with Patricia Hampl rsquo s accidental viewing of the Matisse painting Woman Before an Aquarium which waylaid her on her way to the cafeteria of the Chicago Art Institute to meet a friend some 34 years ago She stood transfixed absorbing the portrait of a woman gazing at a goldf

The Conservative Soul is a dense passionate argument for a simple thesis In the United States true conservatism has been hijacked by the forces of fundamentalism rendering the Republican Party increasingly unacceptable to principled conservatives In Andrew Sullivan rsquo s narrative fundamenta

These days as I a citizen by right of birth of the United States and Ireland wheel my grandson Navid a citizen by right of birth of the United States and Iran through my local shopping mall I look about at people of all shades and shapes and combinations wishing a world of justice and harmon