Some of our recommendations are great beach reads; some are serious history books; and one of them is an old encyclical, because Jesuits gonna Jesuit.
History
Posted inFeatures
The Catholic Church and the 13 colonies in 1776
The Catholic Church in the United States in 1776 was so tiny that it didn’t play a major role in the American Revolution—but the war affected the local church in important and lasting ways.
Posted inBooks
Review: A counternarrative to American religious history
Matthew Sutton’s ‘Chosen Land’ addresses American religious history as one of a luxurious pluralism—but he often crosses the line into a perhaps-overdone editorial voice that grates on the reader.
Posted inBooks
Review: Going nuclear—or not
Two new books—’Return to Fukushima’ and ‘Nuclear Is Not The Solution’—lay out the perils and ugly history of nuclear power.
Posted inEditorials
The editors: The unfinished work that remains for the United States of America
Americans should reject the false choice between an uncritical celebration and a despair that is blind to the country’s virtues.
Posted inPodcasts
Pope Leo and Trump aren’t the first feuding leaders: a history of papal power clashes
This week on “Jesuitical,” hosts Zac Davis and Ashley McKinless talk with historian Miles Pattenden about the long and quirky history of feuds between popes and politicians.
Posted inShort Take
Trump’s celebrations of America at 250 add up to a false unity. St. Augustine shows a different way.
National unity based on the exclusion or oppression of certain groups is inherently divisive. It obscures the complexity of our history and culture.
Posted inDispatches
500 years later, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico still stirs controversy on both sides of the Atlantic
While many Mexicans consider Cortés a rapacious historical villain, Hispanophiles, both in Spain and across the Americas, lionize him for bringing Catholicism and Spanish culture to Mesoamerica.
Posted inNews
Nuns, fashion and Broadway: A theater professor’s unlikely quest to preserve the history of the Sisters of Charity of New York
Professor Darrin Pufall Purdy found elegance and mystery looking at photos of the long black garments while creating costumes for a production at Boise State University.
Posted inBooks
Bob Dylan and the Beatles: New book captures how music changes its makers
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.’