Ari Goldman and I worked side by side some 20 years ago at The New York Times We admired each other I think for a perceived seriousness in the way we went about covering the religion beat It wasn rsquo t just a job it was a vocationto get the story right not just get it written But we were not

The distinction between fact and fiction is often a contested one Nor does it remain static especially for novelists like Graham Greene and Michael Ondaatje who have drawn their inspiration from the fractured politics of our just past century In The English Patient it was World War II and its ru

Near the end of this eye-opening book the renowned Peruvian economist and businessman Hernando de Soto trots out Bill Gates the world rsquo s richest man to bring home his argument about the world rsquo s poorest people Apart from his personal genius how much of his success is due to his cultur

Arlo Guthries classic 1960s folk song, which told us you could get anything you want at Alices Restaurant, has its 90s counterpart on the Internet. There you can visit Go Ask Alice, Columbia Universitys funky site for straight shooting, nonjudgmental answers concerning your physical, emotional, and

It doesn’t take much to get me on the Staten Island ferrythat wondrous half-hour trip across the New York harbor to an island that is one of the city’s five boroughs. Usually, the occasion is a friend’s visit to New York City. Few are those who, looking back from the ferry midway,

For Palestinians, Christmas 2000 was to have been a celebration not only of the second millennium of Jesus’ birth, in which they would play host to the Christian world. It also was to have marked the emergence of Palestine as a destination for world travel with Bethlehem as its center. The Wor

Just before the November election, I gave a lecture in a parish on Christian responsibility in an election year. I suggested that we have to take a variety of issues into consideration in making a judgment about the best candidate and that voters could opt for a strategy other than legal interdictio

When the project Preaching the Just Word was initiated almost 10 years ago, I applauded. After my recent participation in a five-day retreat/workshop with 66 other Jesuits, I stand converted to a program with enormous power and potential. At the age of 75, Father Walter J. Burghardt, S.J., had finis