A Memoir I Never Expected to Write

by George Weigel

George Weigel's Lessons in Hope is full of stories that together present a deeply etched portrait of Pope John Paul II. Continue Reading »

20 Sep 2017

The Parson and the Talmud

by Junior Fellows

The junior fellows reflect on George Herbert's prose and the meaning of the term “talmudic.” Continue Reading »

18 Aug 2017

From a Vanished Library

by David Bentley Hart

The library in question is not the Great Library of Alexandria, but it is every bit as much a thing of the past, existing now as scarcely a memory—almost legendary, positively Edenic. I think it had been my ambition throughout much of my life to accumulate a collection of books in the ideal, . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Apr 2017

The Rise of Dystopian Nonfiction

by K. E. Colombini

Four books on how to survive, and eventually turn the tide on, today’s culture. Continue Reading »

23 Feb 2017

​Love Among the Artifacts

by Matthew Hennessey

This business of signing the inside covers of books is both charming and macabre. People die; books live forever. Scrawling on a flyleaf is a down payment on immortality. Think of me, it says. Memento mori. Continue Reading »

17 Feb 2017

Books for Christmas 2016

by George Weigel

Take a stand against the electrification of reading and consider the following, in properly bound form, as gifts for those on your Christmas—not “Holiday”—list: Continue Reading »

7 Dec 2016

On Reading Old Books

by Rachelle Peterson

Reading classics is humbling. Myopia becomes impossible. Millennia of human history unfold with the pages of books—and with an authenticity that no textbook or documentary can mimic. Continue Reading »

19 Sep 2016

Books of 2015

by John Wilson

We suffer nowadays from a surfeit of literary anni­versaries. One blurs into the next until we begin to long for a moratorium. And yet even so, a few such occasions are welcome. The 150th anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland yielded a splendid array of exhibitions, lectures, and books, . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2016

2015: Our Year in Books

by Various

We asked some of our writers to contribute a paragraph about the most memorable books they read this year.Michael LewisThere is a special chagrin when we belatedly discover the greatness of some author we have been perversely avoiding for decades—in my case, Dostoevsky and Jane Austen. But there . . . . Continue Reading »

11 Dec 2015

Books for Christmas

by George Weigel

It’s been a good reading year and I highly recommend the following to the readers on your Christmas (not “holiday”) shopping list:God or Nothing, by Cardinal Robert Sarah (Ignatius Press): It was the book being discussed at Synod-2015 and with good reason, for this interview-style . . . . Continue Reading »

9 Dec 2015