Books

Noteworthy books on the Bible from the past year address a broad range of issues, including the relationship of religion to science and what the Bible has to say about wealth and poverty.

Jane Leavy chronicles Babe Ruth’s life and times, with a heavy emphasis not only on the culture Ruth played in, but the ways he radically altered that culture, with the help of his visionary agent Christy Walsh.

Stephen Markley's new novel is an intimate, long look at a single night in New Canaan, a fictional “corn and rust” town set somewhere between central and northeast Ohio.

The simultaneous pull of love and sadness is pure Cheever and permeates his Christmas story.

“The American narrative of a hard-luck individual working hard, doing the right thing, and finding success for it is so deep in me, my life story so tempting as potential evidence for that narrative’s validity,” Sarah Smarsh writes of her own upwardly mobile economic and intellectual trajectory, “

William F. Buckley Jr. was more than a prolific writer: He was the brains and coalescing force of a post-World War II philosophy that gradually became known as “conservatism” and which culminated with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as president.