Books

When you read children’s literature you expect to smile at the quirky characters fumbling to figure out their growing independence. You might expect to cry as you watch characters face the pain of growing up. You don’t expect to be confronted by current events like a refugee crisis—and inspired to imagine the kind of society we could be even in the face of terror and fear.

Balancing biography and quantitative research, Robert Putnam paints a sobering picture of the state of the American dream.

In Terry Eagleton's compelling narrative, three plotlines run concurrently: a parade of ideas from the Enlightenment to the present, a sustained argument about the role of culture, and a burlesque apologetic for Christianity.

Michael Walzer addresses a surprising question: the interplay between social revolutions and reactive counterrevolutions.

Frances Taylor Gench doesn't ignore difficult texts about women; she wrestles with them. That's because she is committed to the Bible as scripture.

Mark Taylor's cultural history of speed starts at the Reformation and examines the interwoven threads of religion, society, politics, art, and economics.

Some have dismissed the culture wars as a sideshow. Andrew Hartman insists that the issues at stake in cultural politics are real.

Padraig O'Malley is not the first scholar to call the two-state approach a failed paradigm. Yet where others suggest an alternative, O'Malley remains in the deconstructing stage.

Plenty of scholars have discussed interfaith relations in medieval Spain. What makes David Nirenberg's book distinctive is his emphasis on how each religion's self-image was shaped by its portrayal of the others.