God of the Yawning Gaps
It’s hard to believe in God when even very bright, thoughtful people can’t come up with good reasons why you should.
Graham Daseler
· 13 min read
Books
A collection of 284 posts
A Hardy Myth
A reply to Bruce Gilley.
Oliver Kamm
· 7 min read
The Women of January 6th
A new book details the conspiratorial thinking and dark histories of two Capitol rioters.
Claire Lehmann
· 7 min read
Stormclouds Over the Capitol
Mary Clare Jalonick’s oral history of the 6 January riot is an important corrective to the second Trump administration’s vandalism of the historical record.
Ron Capshaw
· 7 min read
Precipice of Collapse
Two new books about America’s justice system paint a bleak picture of a deeply divided country.
Ron Capshaw
· 8 min read
All the Nuzzi That’s Fit to Print
Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Valerie Pavilonis
· 10 min read
The Conned Artist
David Mamet’s new polemic is filled with muddled prose and muddled thought.
Graham Daseler
· 11 min read
Too Much Gilbert
The author of ‘Eat Pray Love’ has returned with a new memoir, which features all the usual problems with her writing writ large.
Charlotte Allen
· 22 min read
Ballad of a Song and Dance Man
An unorthodox new book by one of America’s finest nonfiction authors tries to make sense of Bob Dylan.
Ronald Radosh
· 20 min read
A Subterranean Celebration
How the 6 Gallery reading in San Francisco on 7 October 1955 changed the counterculture.
David S. Wills
· 13 min read
Better Than Bobby Fischer
Danny Rensch never became the world’s greatest chess player. But his improbable rise from traumatised cult child to dot-com wunderkind represents an even more impressive achievement.
Jonathan Kay
· 15 min read
Lifting Weights
Jordan Castro’s new novel ‘Muscle Man’ offers a wry and meme-literate vision of blokey intellectualism.
Brad Strotten
· 5 min read
Literary Prozac
Matthew Gasda’s new novel unfolds in a haze of empty dialogue and overwrought introspection.
Brad Strotten
· 7 min read
Heterodox Radical
A new collection of Murray Kempton’s articles reveals a thoughtful journalist whose politics were difficult to categorise.
Ron Capshaw
· 9 min read
Epic Failure
Many of the people involved in Uberto Pasolini’s new screen adaptation of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ are intimidatingly talented. It’s a pity, then, that the film is such a disaster.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 14 min read