What can a divided country learn from this momentous gathering—in Pope Leo XIV’s hometown—which took place amid dizzying social change and the rise of the “new” Ku Klux Klan?
Tom Deignan
Tom Deignan, a columnist for the Irish Voice newspaper, writes regularly for America.
Posted inBooks
Review: Three books on the confusing, complex world of American politics
Three authors explore the American political landscape and offer provocative ideas on how to fix it—and if it is worth saving.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ and church-state tensions
Brenda Wineapple’s ‘Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation’—about the famous Scopes “monkey trial,” is timely. Then again, church-state conflicts simply never go away in the United States.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
God and man in America: William F. Buckley Jr.
As Sam Tanenhaus makes clear in ‘Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America,’ it is impossible to understand American politics and culture without grasping Buckley’s immense influence.
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Masked man: Al Jolson and the politics of performance
Richard Bernstein tackles difficult topics in his short study of an extraordinary entertainer, Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania in 1886), and a profoundly important movie—and not just because “The Jazz Singer” is recognized as the “first talkie.”
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A St. Patrick’s Day question: What is the greatest novel ever written about Irish New York?
Chicago has James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan. New Orleans has John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly. Boston has Edwin O’Connor’s ‘Last Hurrah.’ And William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle series has “ironweeds” like Billy and Francis Phelan. What, then, is the greatest book ever written about the New York City Irish?
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Review: An anthology of Jimmy Breslin, chronicler of New York’s best (and worst)
Some of Jimmy Breslin’s best work has now been collected and edited by one of Breslin’s true heirs, The New York Times correspondent Dan Barry.
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Review: Sargent Shriver and the ‘Catholic streak’ that modern politics needs
In ‘Spiritualizing Politics Without Politicizing Religion,’ James R. Price and Kenneth R. Melchin argue that we need Sargent Shriver’s “Catholic streak” now more than ever to break through what they call the “fog of the contemporary culture wars.”
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The Pulitzer winner who predicted Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes 25 years ago
A quarter-century after its release, Steven Millhauser’s ‘Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer’ shines a harsh but revealing light on some of the 21st century’s most powerful forces and enigmatic personalities.
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Review: The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. Or is it?
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s new book is a fierce diagnosis of what continues to tear America apart.