Posted inArts & Culture, Books

The Conjurer

The Rough Rider the Bull Moose the president who used his office as a bully pulpit the man who carried the big stick the asthmatic child who spent mornings on horseback the hunter of lions who nevertheless spared one teddy bearwhat reader cannot already limn the life of the 26th American presid

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Willie at War

It has been 90 years since the beginning of the Great War in 1914 longer than the time between Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor To write about it now is to do history not passionate political attack of the kind Erich Maria Remarque launched in his All Quiet on the Western Front when the war was fres

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Thus Always to Tyrants’

Sarah Vowell whose idiosyncratic voice in both senses is familiar to listeners of National Public Radio rsquo s This American Life expended a considerable amount of effort trekking to places associated with events of national tragedynamely the murders of Presidents Lincoln Garfield and McKinle

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Confronting a Culture of Fear

In the wake of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean as the death toll quickly climbed into the tens of thousands many religious leaders and op-ed pundits focused on a single question Where was God For nonbelievers the catastrophe while tragic was easily explainable Science tells us that a violent

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Blooming Where Planted

David Plante was born in Providence R I in 1940 the next to last of the seven sons of Anaclet and Albina Plante French-Canadians who were called somewhat sneeringly in Yankee New England Canucks Anaclet was a stoical taciturn quarter-breed Blackfoot Indian who worked humbly for a manufactu

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

An Elegaic Portrait

Since the flurry of biographies of Pope John Paul II appeared in the 1990s an uneasy deathwatch has set in among Vaticanologists who have been predicting his imminent death since 1994 The 84-year-old pontiff has not only refused to follow their scenarios he has actually buried many of his

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

New Life in Lima

This slender but powerful book describes how an upper-middle-class parish in Lima Peru was transformed in concert with the poor people in its midst largely through the efforts of its founding pastor The pastor who is also the author of Birth of a Church Joseph Nangle O F M recounts how this

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

The Shape of Things to Come

It was inevitable the academy has struck back After the early favorable reviews and popular success of Professor Stephen Greenblatt rsquo s ldquo biography rdquo of William Shakespeare his scholarly colleagues have now weighed in to remind him that such success comes at a price The New York Ti

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Kentucky Widow Remembers

When Wendell Berry came to Seattle to read from his new novel Hannah Coulter he was introduced with the words ldquo For those of you who wonder where hope still lies rdquo The audience responded with rapt silence as if to say ldquo Yes we are eager for hope rdquo Berry rsquo s novel d

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

How We Express Faith

At the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue in Manhattan between mid-summer of 1896 and June of the following year the seven Jesuit priests who resided there heard nearly 80 000 confessions all but 2 000 of them particular – that is listing the penitents rsquo sins since their last con

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