Ivan Illich was a “radically orthodox” monsignor who remained tradition-minded his entire life. With Pope Francis, his hour may have finally arrived.

For James Joyce, humanity’s faulty condition “is happy because faults, errors, mistakes and misunderstandings” are the birth of comedy, writes Gabrielle Carey in a new biography.

Some suggestions from the staff of America for summer reading: books old and new, long and short, funny and sad.

Books about World War II are ubiquitous in the nonfiction section, but "Hitler's American Gamble" is the rare recent work with a genuinely new contribution to make, not just to our understanding of the past but also to our understanding of the present.

Lauren Groff's new novel inverts Defoe’s "Robinson Crusoe" by casting a girl—and only briefly, much later on in the novel, the woman—as its heroine.

In "All the Kingdoms of the World¸" Kevin Vallier engages with Catholic integralists, but he opens a bigger question: Is there such a thing as a Catholic politics?