Books
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Sept. 1-8, 2014
Anthony Doerr has previously published four books—one nonfiction, one novel and two story collections. His collection Memory Wall in particular helped him stand out from the crowds of writers; it was strange, magical and bold. He has won a number of awards, which is always partly a matter of luck, but he deserved them. His newest book, another novel, takes place primarily during World War II, the main characters a German boy and a blind French girl who...
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Sept. 1-8, 2014
To review a book about a publishing house seems a rather dreary assignment. Who but the most ardent bibliophiles care about print runs and author advances? Does it really matter what appeared in the fall catalogue of 1963? But when the publishing house is home to Nobel Prize-winners and Pulitzer darlings and run by a Guggenheim, well, then things get a little more interesting. Add to the mix a brilliant, Jesuit-educated editor who worked with Thomas Merton...
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Sept. 1-8, 2014
In August Poland commemorated the 70th anniversary of its uprising against the Nazi occupation. The heroic but hopeless 63-day struggle of the poorly armed Polish underground Home Army against the S.S. troops devastated Warsaw, killed thousands and fulfilled, at least temporarily, Hitler’s wish to erase the Polish capital from the face of the earth.
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August 18-25, 2014
These two books come from cultured and urbane Catholic professors of theology, one at Boston College (Imbelli) and the other at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London (Bullivant). Neither needs to raise his voice to make his case effectively. Both are concerned, albeit in different ways, to contribute to the new evangelization of post-Christians or “resting” Christians in the North Atlantic world. Their writing draws energy from the radiant vision of the...
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August 18-25, 2014
One of the hallmarks of the young papacy of Pope Francis has been his repeated critique of what he calls the contemporary “economy of inequality and exclusion.” Some commentators have seen this as an indictment of the present moment, but the pope’s stance would be misinterpreted if it is seen as only a punctual concern rather than as a perennial one. His experience of inequality and its pernicious effects was formed in the crucible of decades accompanying his...
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August 4-11, 2014
I admire the gumption of Richard J. Regan, S.J., who attempts and pretty well succeeds at making sense of the U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the First Amendment’s free exercise and establishment clauses. Those few words, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” have generated more judicial ink than any other part of our Constitution.
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August 4-11, 2014
In this collection of interrelated, multigenerational stories, A Kind of Dream, Kelly Cherry explores themes of family, creativity and mortality. Though it is the third of a trilogy, preceded by My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers and The Society of Friends: Stories, A Kind of Dream is intended to stand alone and self-contained, as its separate narratives and varied points of view eventually resolve themselves into the consciousness of...
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August 4-11, 2014
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, many exiled Iraqis expressed the cautious hope that the U.S. occupation would wind down in a few years and that the country would become a viable democracy. For Zaid Al-Ali, whose family had left Iraq before he was born, this meant leaving a lucrative commercial litigation and arbitration legal practice in Paris in 2005 to work for the United Nations in Iraq drafting a legal framework for the Iraqi parliament,...
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July 21-28, 2014
We know for sure that someone is permanently relevant when his or her name becomes an adjective. In the week—last week of March 2014—I finished the most recent of the very many intellectual biographies of George Orwell, his adjectived name appeared twice in Brooklyn (in our diocesan newspaper and in the Playbill for a performance of “King Lear” at the newly completed Polanski Shakespeare Center), as well as in a New York Times op-ed essay. In this respect at...
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July 21-28, 2014
One of the many expressions of the “Francis effect” is the renewed prominence of “mercy.” Pope Francis, of course, is not the first pope to speak of mercy in the context of God’s relationship with humanity, but it is certainly his signature tune—the word occurs more than 30 times in “The Joy of the Gospel.”