Books

Those of us who knew Paul Dinter as the Catholic chaplain at Columbia University in the 1970 rsquo s and 80 rsquo s were presented with a personable intellectually rigorous and obviously virtuous priest in a crisp Roman collar and well-tailored black suit It was not that he was an unblinking spear

Ross Terrill rsquo s argument goes something like this China is not a modern state It has been unable to escape its heritage of empire and authoritarian political systems The revolution against the Qing Manchu dynasty in 1911 and the Communist seizure of power in 1949 reinforced these premodern

In a story carried by National Public Radio on Jan 2 2003 the correspondent Silvia Poggioli reported that 27 years after the death of Francisco Franco there is increasing interest in Spain in uncovering the brutal history of the Franco dictatorship It would seem then that the appearance of th

John L rsquo Heureux began his career as a novelist writing about leaving the priesthood in the 70 rsquo s in Tight White Collar and The Clang Birds I was then America rsquo s literary editor and the magazine published reviews of both of them The second book was reviewed by Doris Grumbach as I r

The comedian Steve Martin once quipped that the problem with studying philosophy in college is that later in life one always remembers just enough of it to make one rsquo s conscience uncomfortable In his new novel The Cave Nobel laureate Jos eacute Saramago hearkens back to perhaps the best kno

If you like mysteries read this book Even if you don rsquo t like mysteries read itbecause it may save your life The world-famous epidemiologist Devra Davis tracks a killer responsible for millions of avoidable ailments like heart disease and cancer She explains for example why women with high

Chapters 6 through 8 of the Book of Genesis tell how God in response to human wickedness sent a flood to wipe out the human race sparing only the righteous Noah and his family and the animals they gathered into their ark The biblical account interweaves two versions an older one conventionally

In Stanzas From the Grande Chartreuse 1855 Matthew Arnold famously agonized over being caught between two conflicting worlds a beloved but dead faith and whatever unknown but no doubt chilling forces that would replace it Compared with the complex predicaments facing Yezad Chenoy and other ch

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signaled the end of the policy of containment that had guided American foreign policy during the cold war Some commentators declared the Soviet demise to be the end of history and faulted presidents George H W Bush and Bill Clinton as bunglers They missed an e

If history is bunk any history of the Oscars is full of it We all know designation as Best Picture hardly means a film was the best movie of the year As Emanuel Levy readily concedes in All About Oscar Hollywood rsquo s decision making has always been flawed and as he details in some excellent