National unity based on the exclusion or oppression of certain groups is inherently divisive. It obscures the complexity of our history and culture.
History
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.’
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.