Books

The distinguished social historian William H Chafe author of significant studies of civil rights the women rsquo s movement and liberalism considers in Private Lives Public Consequences how the personal becomes political Starting with the old-fashioned conviction that individual leaders make a

This year rsquo s hurricanes floods and earthquakes produced such unforgettable apocalyptic scenes of devastation that they may well have altered at least temporarily the imaginative context within which we read Wendell Berry rsquo s new collection of poems many of which celebrate the serene n

In an utterly captivating piece of historical fiction Julie Baumgold has crafted a multifaceted gem of a novel that chronicles the history of the R gent diamond the central piece of the precious stone collection of the French throne Spirited out of India in 1702 by Robert Pitt the son of Thomas

Over 70 years ago in 1934 the prize-winning biographer and historian Matthew Josephson published an eye-opening best seller entitled The Robber Barons Through prodigious research reports of congressional committees and ldquo inquiries rdquo done by state legislatures as key sources and gifted

Readers of this absorbing book will learn a great deal about a politically ambitious English immigrant named Daniel Horsmanden who as a judge on New York rsquo s Supreme Court played a pivotal role in the transmutation of a sequence of robberies and suspicious fires in 1741 into a vast conspiracy

Man of letters Public intellectual Cultural critic Feuilletoniste Whatever he was exactly they don rsquo t make them like that anymore and the more rsquo s the pity Once upon a time writers like Edmund Wilson Mary McCarthy Irving Howe Alfred Kazin or even George Orwell armed only with the

In Blessed Among All Women Robert Ellsberg publisher of Orbis Books has compiled another unorthodox hagiography The book records the lives of 136 holy women Their stories eloquently told in short entries are grouped according to the virtues of the Beatitudes an arrangement that reflects Ells

With good reason Steven McKenzie worries that many modern men and women misunderstand the Bible There is confusion between biblical and scientific approaches to creation and a misguided recourse to biblical apocalyptic frequently in fundamentalist circles but not limited to them McKenzie prof

In this second collection by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Mary Oliver containing 42 new poems the contents run in reverse chronological order the most recent ones first just the way a curriculum vitae starts with the latest accomplishments Publishers must fear a flagging of int

If Thomas O rsquo Malley rsquo s first book In the Province of Saints is anything to judge by he has a real future ahead of him as a novelist The story takes place in Ireland more specifically in the southern part between 1976 and 1981 But geography alas does not spare his characters from