Ross Terrill rsquo s argument goes something like this China is not a modern state It has been unable to escape its heritage of empire and authoritarian political systems The revolution against the Qing Manchu dynasty in 1911 and the Communist seizure of power in 1949 reinforced these premodern

Those of us who knew Paul Dinter as the Catholic chaplain at Columbia University in the 1970 rsquo s and 80 rsquo s were presented with a personable intellectually rigorous and obviously virtuous priest in a crisp Roman collar and well-tailored black suit It was not that he was an unblinking spear

Around Jesus rsquo time roughly from 20 B C to A D 70 Jews especially in Jerusalem developed the practice of a two-stage burial The corpse would first be laid out on a shelf cut into the wall of a burial cave and allowed to decompose Then a year later the bones would be gathered up and pl

John L rsquo Heureux began his career as a novelist writing about leaving the priesthood in the 70 rsquo s in Tight White Collar and The Clang Birds I was then America rsquo s literary editor and the magazine published reviews of both of them The second book was reviewed by Doris Grumbach as I r

In a story carried by National Public Radio on Jan 2 2003 the correspondent Silvia Poggioli reported that 27 years after the death of Francisco Franco there is increasing interest in Spain in uncovering the brutal history of the Franco dictatorship It would seem then that the appearance of th

The comedian Steve Martin once quipped that the problem with studying philosophy in college is that later in life one always remembers just enough of it to make one rsquo s conscience uncomfortable In his new novel The Cave Nobel laureate Jos eacute Saramago hearkens back to perhaps the best kno