Editors

Calling all graduating college seniors and recent graduates. Want to apply for the First Things junior fellows program? Applications are due Friday, March 17, 2017. Continue Reading »

Here are some awesome books that you should be reading, or thinking about buying, for Christmastime. Continue Reading »

I've been immersed in Shakespeare's King Lear, but not solely as a text on a page. I'm acting in a production of the play here in New York City, playing the King of France and the Servant who stands up to Cornwall in the famous eye-gouging scene. Continue Reading »

On my honeymoon in Venice and Rome, I read Crosstalk, the latest novel from scintillating sci-fi writer Connie Willis. Like other Willis novels, this book uses a science fiction premise to season a screwball comedy. Here our heroine juggles romantic misadventures and the sudden, unwanted gift of telepathy.
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I've spent much of my free time over the past two weeks watching the AMC series The Walking Dead. I had avoided the series for some time on account of its gore, but since starting it I have (with some prudent skimming and skipping) found it engaging and reasonably thoughtful. Meanwhile, on the strength of Eamon Duffy's review in the current issue of First Things, I have been reading Carlos Eire's new history Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650. Continue Reading »

Mark up your calendar for the next weeks . . . Continue Reading »

This week I’ve been reading the first volume of Volker Ullrich’s new biography Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939. A second volume, which will presumably cover the years from the beginning of World War II to Hitler’s death at his own hand in mid-1945, has not yet been published.
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Mark Helprin’s The Pacific and Other Stories is the book. It is a powerful grouping of diverse tales that take place on different continents, at different times, and among different people. What is common to them all is the effect they produce ... Continue Reading »

Mark up your Calendars for the next weeks . . . Continue Reading »

It is a common thesis that the social/sexual changes of recent years are the flowering of the Sixties. This makes the best commentators and essayists of that era worth rereading. Continue Reading »