In All Things

Our live in grandchild teamed up with my husband and pressured us into acquiring an adorable Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy Yesterday a Cavalier was pictured in a N Y Times Business section story reporting that there are 44 8 million pet dogs in America Their owners help to support a 38 bi

The full text of Pope Benedict XVI s new encyclical on hope Spe Salvi has just been released by the Vatican The link is below Like Benedict s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est it is primarily in the form of a meditation See what you think Spe Salvi

Has anyone slogged through Philip Pullman s The Golden Compass part of his bestselling trilogy known as His Dark Materials An excellent article in The Atlantic called How Hollywood Saved God shows how the book s frankly anti-Catholic plotline was successfully watered down for a new ho

If you haven t done so already be sure to check out editor in chief Drew Christiansen s discussion of The Stillborn God with sociologist Jose Casanova Mark Lilla s new books has received a number of approving reviews and was excerpted on the cover of the New York Times magazine But both

This is my first ever entry on a blog and while I am happy to be doing so in such good company my happiness is not untethered from an ongoing ambivalence about the blogosphere in particular and the Internet in general As the recent book Cult of the Amateur Doubleday 2007 by Andrew Keen

It is disheartening that America s leaders are arguing over the permissibility of torture and splitting hairs over its definition Water boarding or the near drowning of a prisoner has been defended as an interrogation technique It also seems beyond doubt that U S officials have forcibly hand

Welcome to In All Things the new editorial blog from America magazine Inspired by the magazine s popular Of Many Things column our new group blog will feature daily commentary from the magazine s editors and writers on a variety of topics from politics to sports from issues of bioethic

Happily the media did a decent job in its coverage of the revelations about Mother Teresa s dark night contained in the bestselling book Mother Teresa Come Be My Light More representative of the overall coverage were thoughtful articles like David Van Biema s piece in Time which was somet

Last summer New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about a book he picked up in a New Hampshire bookstore The Autobiography of an Elderly Woman The elderly woman describes what she calls living in a different dimension where her sons no longer seek her advice but rather carefully shield her