The musical and personal lives of Bob Dylan and the Beatles were intertwined in myriad ways, as author Jim Windolf teases out in his pleasurable new book, ‘Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other—and the World.’
History
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Bob Dylan at 85: Forever young?
Bob Dylan will be 85 this week. While ‘America’ didn’t always offer him the coverage he deserved, many of our writers have found much to love in his music and other artistic works.
Posted inBooks
Review: Mario Vargas Llosa’s final book approaches the question of nationhood
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.
Posted inBooks
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.
Posted inBooks
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.
Posted inBooks
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.
Posted inBooks
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.
Posted inBooks
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?