Jane Austen’s literary genius lies in the fact that she crafts stories that impart the most pressing of human concerns in what seem at first the most mundane of experiences. It makes her a valuable guide to life.
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Predicting (and preventing) the next civil war
Barbara F. Walter offers a handy guide for predicting where political instability is most likely to occur—and it is usually when that country is moving away from democracy.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Two scholars on Covid, mortality and the meaning of friendship
While a new book of letters between Jack Miles and Mark C. Taylor uses the early months of the pandemic as the background and occasion for their letters, the friendship they display is vastly more interesting.
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Review: What modern Catholicism gets wrong about the doctrine of atonement
The doctrine of atonement has fallen into disfavor in some theological circles and into general neglect in Catholic life. Margaret Turek’s new book offers insights about the doctrine’s importance.
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Review: What happens when athletic heroes fall out of love with the game?
Sports memoirs tend to have a certain arc: the odyssey of the triumphant athlete. But every now and then, a retired athlete—like Jerry West, Abby Wambach and Gale Sayers—tells a more complicated story.
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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.
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Review: When popes play peacemaker
Vatican diplomacy has as its primary goal peace through dialogue, which runs counter to the complex dance of pressures and negotiations that nation-states use to jockey for power on the global stage.
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Kellyanne Conway’s Catholic girlhood and my own
Mary Gordon finds that her childhood and that of former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway were strangely similar—and yet diverged in telling ways.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Defend or defund the police? It’s more complicated than that.
Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor who has volunteered as a reserve officer for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, takes us behind the scenes of urban policing in her new book.
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C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and the Inklings: Telling Stories to Save Lives
As modern-day evangelists, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are simply unrivaled.