Rebecca Bratten Weiss’s ‘The Books That Made Us’ asks: What are we to do when we realize the art that formed us is, perhaps, problematic?
Literature
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Review: Christopher Beha’s journey of belief
Christopher Beha’s ‘Why I Am Not an Atheist’ recounts decades of seeking through reading, trying to find the shape of a meaningful, sustainable worldview without God.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
25 years later, ‘Nickel and Dimed’ is as relevant as ever.
Between spring 1998 and summer 2000, Barbara Ehrenreich took jobs that paid minimum wage or slightly above in Florida, Maine and Minnesota. What she detailed was a world of people living on a financial razor’s edge, unable to afford healthy food or decent housing, but still holding down two and three jobs to try to make ends meet.
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What photos from the Artemis II astronauts say to us in a time of war
Maybe today—tonight—we should all take another look at “Earthset.” We need to feel anew a sense of identification with humankind and the planet as a whole.
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Tracy Kidder, biographer of a broken world’s ordinary heroes
Tracy Kidder, who died last week at the age 80, wrote on everything from true crime to computer design to retirement homes to genocide to Vietnam to pioneering figures in the world of medicine. He also told stories of hope and inspiration in several of his books, including the monumental ‘Mountains Beyond Mountains.’
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‘Your homework is to tell someone you love them today’: Colman McCarthy’s lessons in peace
Colman McCarthy, who died on Feb. 27 at the age of 87, had a well-deserved reputation for seeking out the underdogs in life—as well as for his determined lifelong stands against war, capital punishment, homelessness and the other seamy sides of contemporary capitalism.
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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: Seeking a healthy planet and a healthy church
In Christina Rivera’s new collection, we wander through waves of connections, an ebb and flow carrying us between climate change, the sixth extinction, motherhood, all kinds of oceans and personal challenges—including the writer’s desire to leave the Catholic Church she was raised in.
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Review: A Jesuit high school whodunit
Anna Bruno’s ‘Fine Young People,’ set at St. Ignatius, an elite Jesuit high school in a Pittsburgh suburb, operates as a whodunit on multiple levels simultaneously.
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Review: Parables of a Greenland priest
Henrik Pontoppidan’s ‘The White Bear’ gives us two novellas that work in conversation with each other. Both feature burly, uncouth protagonists who endure episodes of childhood trauma and develop a fiercely independent way of engaging with the world.