Ten years after his death, commentators and admirers of Seamus Heaney are still looking for new ways to measure his life and work.
Books
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In the belly of the beast: Daniel Kraus’s novel ‘Whalefall’ considers the power of communion and grief
Sucked into the belly of an 80-foot sperm whale, scuba diver Jay Gardiner reconciles the loss of his father and challenges the power of the creatures of the sea in Daniel Kraus’s novel ‘Whalefall.’
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Review: Daniel Hornsby’s new novel seeks meaning in a world gone mad
Daniel Hornsby’s new page-turning novel ‘Sucker’ is consistently funny, a sobering screengrab of our wealth- and power-obsessed nation.
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Review: How can we fix our hospitals?
In his debut book, ‘The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine,’ Ricardo Nuila presents the conflict between the profit motive of health care and the art of medicine by describing the hospitals that work for people and the hospitals that do not.
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Review: The shameful history of when the Jesuits sold enslaved people
In ‘The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church,’ Rachel Swarns tells of “one of the largest documented slave sales in the nation,” the Jesuit sale of 272 enslaved persons in 1838.
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Three new books expose the shameful history of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries
In recent years, several books have attempted to piece together what really happened behind the doors of power in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, including Emer Martin’s novel ‘The Cruelty Men,’ Claire Keegan’s novella ‘Small Things Like These,’ and new collection of essays, ‘A Dublin Magdalene Laundry: Donnybrook and Church-State Power in Ireland,’ edited by Mark Coen, Katherine O’Donnell and Maeve O’Rourke.
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The devastation and dishonesty of the ‘wonder drug,’ thalidomide
It was touted as a sedative with no hangover. It was hailed as non-addictive. It was rumored to present no side effects. It was trumpeted in medical journal ads as “astonishingly safe” and “completely non-poisonous.”
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Review: A Florida family’s explosive life
in ‘Fireworks Every Night,’ the debut novel by Beth Raymer, is an ode to Florida—to the rattlesnakes, the humid heat and the Palm Beach pretensions of those who out of necessity live a life apart from that glitz and glamor.
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Review: Biography opens new windows into the life of MLK
Jonathan Eig’s new biography, ‘King: A Life,’ is the first major biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades and will take its place among the foremost of the many treatments of King.
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Review: Henri Nouwen’s profound encounters in Ukraine
Henri Nouwen’s observations in ‘Ukraine Diary’ are even more relevant today than they were at the time of his writing, offering valuable insight into the ongoing tragedy of the war in Ukraine.