To Notre Dame fans as well as to a certain portion of the American Catholic populace, Knute Rockne remains a mythic figure—the founding father of the legend of the Fighting Irish.
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The U.S. church today—and tomorrow
‘Reclaiming American Catholicism,’ coming in at nearly 400 pages, is a comprehensive and meticulous synopsis of many of the ills that are plaguing the church in the United States.
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Review: Slavery and American Jewish history
The Jewish people in America have long punched above their demographic weight. Consider how deprived our science, music, letters, film and law would be absent the contributions of Abraham’s stock. Owing to this and all the discredited drivel about the American slave trade’s supposed Jewish hub, a fresh, thoughtful treatment of Jews and America’s original […]
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Review: A world inundated by trash
“Every day, the world discards 1.5 billion plastic cups, 250 million pounds of clothes, 220 million aluminum cans, 3 million tires.” These nearly ungraspable numbers are among the staggering revelations with which Alexander Clapp confronts us in ‘Waste Wars.’
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Review: Virginia Woolf’s shades of violet
‘The Life of Violet’ is a set of three interconnected short stories written by Virginia Woolf in 1907. The collection was released in its edited form by Princeton University Press for the first time in early October.
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Review: Elizabethan drama (and fiction)
In her debut novel ‘Lightborne,’ Hesse Phillips portrays a world of intrigues swirling around Christopher Marlowe and his London circle.
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Review: The return of Thomas Pynchon
A kind of maximalist profusion of detail and incident characterizes ‘Shadow Ticket,’ though this new novel from Thomas Pynchon might also be categorized as zany neo-noir—or slapstick noir—for developing the noir tropes of the 1930s and 1940s in a less hardboiled, wackier direction.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
‘Gaudium et Spes’ and the optimistic final days of Vatican II
Vatican II closed 60 years ago this week. One of its final documents, “Gaudium et Spes,” has also proved to be perhaps its most influential.
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What William Kennedy’s writing did for his hometown of Albany
William Kennedy did for his hometown what Joyce did for Dublin, what Bellow did for Chicago, what Faulkner did for his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. He became the bard of a particular time and place and, through it, continues to explore universal themes.
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‘Lumen Gentium’: The master work of Vatican II
Some of the most resonant and memorable phrases of Vatican II come from “Lumen Gentium,” including the description of the church as the people of God.