Recommendations from the editors of America magazine, plus some poetry too!
Literature
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Colson Whitehead and the long reach of trauma
Colson Whitehead’s award-winning novel is a timely reflection on who gets to write history…and who gets to erase it.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The theology of sin
Two recently published books from Oxford University Press address the variegated and multifaced character of sin in the New Testament.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Why Americans should brush up on their Catholic history
Leslie Woodcock Tentler’s new book is both a rigorous and laudable effort to cure American Catholics of the illusion that our desires have no history.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Ross Douthat on our state of stagnation
Ross Douthat explores the cultural, economic and political torpor that he thinks has emerged in the United States over the last half-century.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: An insider’s look at cop culture
His vivid firsthand experiences on the job as a police officer are recounted extensively in Adam Plantinga’s new book.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
An American Jesuit on James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’: obscene, blasphemous and ‘against the natural law’
From 1934: An America editor waited 14 years for his chance, but then he came out swinging against James Joyce.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: When a dream of equality is deferred
Eric Foner’s new book tells a sad story: how the U.S. Supreme Court, many Southern states and Congress delayed the implementation of three important constitutional amendments for nearly a century.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: A plague’s worldwide devastation
Lawrence Wright’s new thriller deals with the effects of a killer pandemic.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The continued fight to eradicate clergy sex abuse
Nualy Kenny’s new book on clergy sex abuse reminds us there are solutions to this deep crisis that need to be implemented with urgency.