You are a 26-year-old mother of four and suddenly you find yourself behind bars mdash not for a few months but for a long 16 years as a first-time drug offender During those years your children grow up and the youngest angrily blurts out when you finally do return and attempt to resume your ro

In light of the present worldwide prestige of the papacy it comes as a shock to realize that less than a century and a quarter ago an anticlerical mob tried to interrupt Pope Pius IX rsquo s funeral procession determined to throw the pope rsquo s corpse into the Tiber And it seems like ancient hi

I do not often agree with Michael Novak but the subtitle of his new book attracted me anyone willing to show that Samuel Huntington rsquo s dramatic prediction of a clash of civilizations is wrong is someone I want very much to read Unfortunately Novak mentions Huntington only in passing and neve

Cornel West rsquo s Democracy Matters is a fervent heartfelt and angry jeremiad about the current state of American society Democracy the author states at the outset is being or already has been snuffed out in America by three dominating tendencies free market fundamentalism militaristic inte

Back when President Bill Clinton rsquo s pledge to ldquo end welfare as we know it rdquo was known in White House corridors as ldquo EWAWKI rdquo pronounced to rhyme with Milwaukee Jason DeParle senior writer at The New York Times was closer to the policy story than any reporter DeParle cou

Cynthia Ozick is a storyteller with an acute sense of the world Her stories are parables and her novels have the precision of Jamesian prose coupled with wit and deep philosophical import Her novel Heir to the Glimmering World renders the lives of refugees and outcasts with humor and empathy and