Brenda Wineapple’s ‘Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation’—about the famous Scopes “monkey trial,” is timely. Then again, church-state conflicts simply never go away in the United States.
Books
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The fertility crisis and moving beyond the ‘good mother’ myth
What if we all thought less about being mothers and more about raising children? What if we focused on the children’s vocational raising instead of the mother’s rigid label?
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Building a Palestinian theology amid the ruin
‘The Cross and the Olive Tree’ allows peace advocates in the Middle East to imagine a new year with a glimmer of hope.
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Review: Rediscovering a forgotten theological force at Vatican II
With her new study of Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., Mary Kate Holman offers a major contribution to ressourcement scholarship and the history of Vatican II.
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Review: the catholic Catholic imagination of John Darnielle & the Mountain Goats
John Darnielle’s ‘This Year: 365 Songs Annotated’ collects lyrics from, and brief reflections on, 365 different Mountain Goats songs. Catholicism saturates his lyrics, which include references to saints, heretics, the rosary and the Bible.
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Review: The U.S. church today—and tomorrow
‘Reclaiming American Catholicism,’ coming in at nearly 400 pages, is a comprehensive and meticulous synopsis of many of the ills that are plaguing the church in the United States.
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Review: Slavery and American Jewish history
The Jewish people in America have long punched above their demographic weight. Consider how deprived our science, music, letters, film and law would be absent the contributions of Abraham’s stock. Owing to this and all the discredited drivel about the American slave trade’s supposed Jewish hub, a fresh, thoughtful treatment of Jews and America’s original […]
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Review: A world inundated by trash
“Every day, the world discards 1.5 billion plastic cups, 250 million pounds of clothes, 220 million aluminum cans, 3 million tires.” These nearly ungraspable numbers are among the staggering revelations with which Alexander Clapp confronts us in ‘Waste Wars.’
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Review: Virginia Woolf’s shades of violet
‘The Life of Violet’ is a set of three interconnected short stories written by Virginia Woolf in 1907. The collection was released in its edited form by Princeton University Press for the first time in early October.
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Review: Elizabethan drama (and fiction)
In her debut novel ‘Lightborne,’ Hesse Phillips portrays a world of intrigues swirling around Christopher Marlowe and his London circle.