Predictably, spring brought the annual tussles about whether or not The Vagina Monologues ought to be performed at Catholic colleges and universities. I understand those who think the content and (...)
I remember when I first tried it. I said it would be a one-time thing, but I soon became a daily user, unable to resist the promise of a brief escape from the pressures of graduate school. It (...)
Truth in reviewing requires I admit being not only a fan of historical fiction but a sometime practitioner. In that capacity, I joined an academic panel discussion a few years back with several (...)
Tom Wolfe wrote chillingly about the college "hook-up" culture of casual and crude sexual encounters a few years ago in his novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons. Donna Freitas studies the (...)
When Arthur Rimbaud reached Marseilles in August 1891, he had only three months to live. He had come from Roche, in the Ardennes, changing trains in Paris on a rainy Sunday evening, his sister (...)
After reading part 1 of Pat Barker's Life Class, I found to my surprise and disappointment that I was seriously considering not finishing the book. I had looked forward to reading this work after (...)
If you want people to read your book, it never hurts to start with a bold claim-like that made by Harvard colleagues Kevin Madigan (a Christian) and Jon Levenson (a Jew) in the first sentence of (...)
The best-selling atheistic manifestoes by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are now in the paperback phase of their remarkable cultural tour. Affordable editions of Dawkins's (...)
In 1949, Karl Jaspers introduced the notion of an "axial age" to describe a few centuries around the middle of the first millennium B.C. when great spiritual masters planted the seeds (...)
Nearly every observer and commentator judged Benedict XVI's six-day visit last month to Washington, D.C., and New York City a great success. In his first extended introduction to American society (...)
DEMOCRACY & FREEDOMArguing against President George W. Bush, Commonweal's editors ("Stop It," March 28) claim wars should not be waged to spread democracy and freedom, but (...)
This third volume of John Richardson's monumental biography of Pablo Picasso is divided into thirty-nine chapters plus an epilogue. This division seems natural enough once one has finished (...)
The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. I will build you up again, and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt. Again you will
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has created a blog, Captive FLDS Children.org, to update its position in the ongoing fight over custody of its children. The group is charging Texas with genocide...
