Niall Ferguson is one of the leading mdash and almost certainly the most controversial mdash historian in contemporary Britain He last shocked his compatriots with The Pity of War which argued that Britain was as much to blame as Germany for World War I that the war could have been avoided and th

During the cold war, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists became famous for its Doomsday Clock. The position of the hands on the clock showed how close the world was, in the judgment of the publication’s board of directors, to the midnight of mass nuclear annihilation. Every time the directors mo

A conference in Washington, D.C., with hunger as its theme? Some might assume that such a conference would be about hunger in the developing world. At this particular gathering on the first three days of April, however, the focus was on the often-hidden but widespread levels of hunger that pose a se

Soaring energy prices rapidly turned last winter into a season of severe discontent. In the Northeast the price of residential heating oil rose by more than 50 percent since the previous winter. In the Midwest homeowners paid at least 60 percent more for natural gas. In California households braced

The statistics from Sudan appall any decent observer. In the last 17 years, two million persons have been killed, four million have been internally displaced and hundreds of thousands made refugees. Yet the West seems to evince little interest in the hidden holocaust that is consuming Southern Sudan

Call for HopeHow refreshing it was to see such a hope-filled article (On the Church, 4/23). How good it was to see one of our most respected bishops thoughtfully say, No! There is another way of looking at church! How I wish there were more bishops like Walter Kasper.I write this comment as one who

My job at America is so enjoyable that sometimes I’m amazed that I get paid for it. Well, I don’t actually get paid for it, or rather, technically I do, though my salary is applied to the Jesuit community by virtue of my vow of poverty and, well...you know what I mean.Anyway, it’s

Last Christmas a Canadian journal reported that a feminist scholar had attacked the prevalence of the image of Frosty the Snowman on seasonal cards and gift-wrap as an emblem of domineering patriarchy Frosty she grumped is a WEM White Euro-Male fat and overstuffed to boot Exceptional Not when

Hopkins seems to think the whole universe is wonderful. I have a friend who just told me yesterday he has brain cancer. What does Hopkins have to say to him? A student at Loyola University Chicago asked this question recently in a class on Victorian literature, during a discussion of the English Jes