His final work, published now for the first time in English, Mario Varvas Lloisa approaches the question of nationhood not in the abstract terms of a sociologist or philosopher, but obliquely, through a kind of literary ventriloquism, in a hybrid form combining the novel and essay.
History
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Review: A saintly variety show
In ‘Canticle,’ a page-turner of a debut novel by Janet Rich Edwards, the reader is offered the Catholic equivalent of a monster truck rally: Just when you think the story has settled into one track, it delivers a fresh surprise.
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What America’s editors said about communism and the Berlin Blockade
In 1948, the Soviet Union initiated a blockade of the Western zone of the city of Berlin. ‘America’’s contributors and editors took that conflict very, very seriously.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Trump, Pope Leo, William F. Buckley and John XXIII: An overview of Popes and Politics in America
A literary spat between ‘America’ and William F. Buckley 65 years ago is proving to have been eerily proleptic in light of Mr. Trump’s war of words against the pope and the latter’s assertion of church teaching on just war.
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Review: Three books on the confusing, complex world of American politics
Three authors explore the American political landscape and offer provocative ideas on how to fix it—and if it is worth saving.
Posted inFaith and Reason
Two popes named Leo: What Leo XIII tells us about his successor
In a world starved of empathy, Leo XIII’s call for us to care for each other might be the most important item on Leo XIV’s agenda.
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Review: The Mets and the history of class and race in New York City
In ‘Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People’s Team,’ A. M. Gittlitz fuses his interest in leftist sociopolitics with his love of baseball, or, rather, his very specific love of the Mets.
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Review: Thomas More, God’s good servant
Joanne Paul wrote her powerful and considerable biography of Thomas More because she finds More’s life relevant to today’s world. But the book also addresses another question: Was More a saintly martyr or a vicious murderer?
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Review: Molly McNett and making the unsayable sayable
Molly McNett’s ‘Child of These Tears’ displays the difficulties of translation, the irreducibility of meaning, and the frustrating limitations of human nature and society.
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Review: Bennett Cerf, Random House co-founder and superstar editor
Gayle Feldman’s new biography of Bennett Cerf, ‘Nothing Random,’ is a window into the past of American literary culture.