Book review: “The Madonna” by Jean Guitton
On the opening page of his text for The Madonna, Jean Guitton, a French philosopher and theologian, notes that, in the Gospels, Mary doesn’t say much. That got me thinking, [...]
Book review: “Butcher’s Crossing” by John Williams
Twenty-three-year-old Will Andrews looks around him and sees the rich, vibrant, beautiful abundance of the natural world. This happens at many, many points in John Williams’s 1960 novel Butcher’s Crossing. [...]
Poem: All souls catch the light
All souls catch the light Patrick T. Reardon All souls catch the light, catch the rhythm, catch the virus. The pebble vote of all souls. [...]
Book review: “A Certain Justice” by P.D. James
It’s pretty clear, early on, that Garry Ashe, young and silkily clever, is a murderer although maybe not the person responsible for the killing at the center of the 1997 [...]
Book review: “The Art of Biblical Poetry” by Robert Alter
For nearly half a century, Robert Alter has been reading and analyzing the books of the Hebrew Bible as works of literature and has become a towering presence in the [...]
Book review: “Lincoln the Citizen: February 12, 1809 to March 4, 1861” by Henry C. Whitney, edited and with an introduction by Michael Burlingame
Abraham Lincoln’s friend and courtroom colleague Henry Clay Whitney remembered him as a man with an agile and restless mind, as “a versatile genius, whether as a man or boy. [...]
Poem: The door
The door By Patrick T. Reardon Child of the Century only lacks the North Wind, a sparrow in the eye of the raptor. Lizard scratches across sand. [...]
Book review: “The English Soul: Faith of a Nation” by Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd’s The English Soul: Faith of a Nation, published by the University of Chicago Press, is a rich and odd book — rich because of the author’s storytelling skill [...]
Book review: “Menewood” by Nicola Griffith
When Edwin, the overking of Northumbre, hears that Hild, his niece and sometime advisor, is pregnant, he is not pleased. He tells her several times that the baby she is [...]
Book review: “Cards on the Table” by Agatha Christie
The central murder in Agatha Christie’s 1936 Cards on the Table is an audacious act that takes place in a closed-door room where a table of bridge players are intent [...]