The novelist and memoirist André Aciman chronicles his formative year in Rome as a teenager in ‘Roman Year.’
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: ISIS killed her son. She met them face to face.
‘American Mother,’ Diane Foley’s and Colum McCann’s story of Foley’s life and that of her son, James Foley, is written with a mother’s love, her eventual understanding of hostage situations and her desire for others to understand the struggle she faced.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Father James Martin on three books about death and mortality
I was delighted recently to discover that three of my favorite authors, all from extremely different backgrounds and perspectives, have written three extremely different books on aging. Yet even with their differences, they agree on the big points.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
R.I.P. John Coleman, S.J., distinguished sociologist (and parish priest)
One of the nation’s most distinguished sociologists for many years and an expert on the relationship between religion and public life, the Rev. John A. Coleman died on Jan. 17, 2025 in Los Gatos, Calif., at the age of 87.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Octavia Butler: A Black science fiction writer who predicted today’s dire headlines
Octavia Butler, the Black science fiction writer who died in 2006, did not just create imaginary worlds with parallels to ours. Sometimes she created worlds that are eerily a little too much like our own.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Michael Longley’s poetry perfectly blends Irish political and pastoral themes
Michael Longley, the Irish poet whose long career included more than 40 books, died last week. He was lauded by literary, social and political figures alike for his many contributions to Irish literature and to the cause of social reconciliation.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Josephine Ward was one of British Catholicism’s leading lights—and a prolific novelist.
Josephine Ward was a strong critic of Catholic modernism, and many of her novels featured protagonists struggling to reconcile au courant political and religious ideas with the strictures of the Catholic Church.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Doris Kearns Goodwin looks back on the ’60s—and the love of her life
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s” centers on the unique history found by going through her and her husband Dick Goodwin’s boxes of writings and memorabilia from his five-decade career in American politics.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Examining the sanctuary movement at an important political moment
By centering the voices and experiences of Latina/o sanctuary leaders in ” Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities,” Gina M. Pérez presents sanctuary as both a sacred and secular reality.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The nonviolent Jesus
In “The Gospel of Peace,” the Rev. John Dear embarks on a kind of spiritual experiment: interpreting the three synoptic Gospels through the lens of nonviolent activism and uncovering connections between first-century Judea and modern-day America.