Certain dates in history have a powerful hold on the American imagination When we think about World War II we remember Dec 7 1941 mdash a date President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed would forever live ldquo in infamy rdquo Our minds also turn to D-Day June 6 1944 when Allied forces led by

Anthony Shadid put his life in harm rsquo s way so many times that his death in February 2012 has come to seem foreordained Here was a reporter who made his name in the crosshairs of war in Iraq of course but also in Israel and Lebanon In 2002 he was shot by an Israeli sniper in Ramallah while

Paul Krugman on our "gratuitous" recession

Jesus and race in America

Charles Dickens and the London poor

I came to Mary C Sullivan rsquo s biography of Catherine McAuley with several entrenched assumptions about the level of interest a 19th-century Irish founder of a women rsquo s religious order could possibly inspire These assumptions were handily challenged by the narrative sweep that Sullivan map