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Provisional Conclusions
A conversation with poet Stephen Dunn.
Interview by Aaron Rench
March/April 2008
The Old Man and the Woods
A prizewinning novel from Norway.
by Alf Walgermo
March/April 2008
"To Be Young Was Very Heaven"
The poetic friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge.
by Robert Siegel
March/April 2008
Planetary Influences
The hidden meaning of the Chronicles of Narnia.
by Tom Shippey
March/April 2008
POETRY
O
by Luci Shaw
March/April 2008
Missionaries and Anthropologists
Murder in Thailand.
by Mark Walhout
January/February 2008
C. S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem
Recovering the medieval imagination.
by Michael Ward
January/February 2008
Remember Biafra?
A new book by of of Africa's most promising novelists.
by Susan VanZanten Gallagher
January/February 2008
POETRY
The Artist of God
In memory of Fae Malania, All Saints Day 2007
by Marly Youmans
January/February 2008
In the Net
William Gibson's new novel.
by Tom Shippey
January/February 2008
Tangy
Poetry from the end of a great dynasty.
by Laurance Wieder
September/October 2007
Eliot's Rebellious Heirs
Revisiting the Confessional poets.
by Aaron Belz
September/October 2007
Supper with the Infinite
The poetry of Franz Wright.
by Nate Zoba
September/October 2007
Whitman the Temperance Novelist
by Mark Walhout
September/October 2007
A Tabernacle in the Dark
On the road with Cormac McCarthy.
by Phil Christman
September/October 2007
Finding Your MacBearings
by Stephen N. Williams
September/October 2007
The Youngest Brother's Tale
Harry Potter's grand finale.
by Alan Jacobs
September/October 2007
Re-Enchanting Emerson
"Resources that naturalism has suppressed or forgotten."
by Harold K. Bush
July/August 2007
POETRY
Your Melodies
by Laurance Wieder
July/August 2007
Poetic Yearner
Robert Penn Warren's "religious sense."
by Steven D. Ealy
May/June 2007
POETRY
Letter to King's Daughter Hospital, Room 244
by Susanna Childress
May/June 2007
Tannhauser Rides Again
1565: Muslims battle Christians in the bloody Siege of Malta.
by N.D. Wilson
May/June 2007
POETRY
The Sea of Traherne
by Marly Youmans
March/April 2007
POETRY
The Little Flowers of Dan Quisenberry
by Brett Foster
March/April 2007
They Didn't Have Email
The massive concluding volume of C. S. Lewis' Collected Letters.
by Michael Ward
March/April 2007
Disaster Man
A conversation with William Langewiesche.
Interview by Wendy Murray
March/April 2007
Boccaccio in Hollywood
Jane Smiley's new novel.
by Lauren F. Winner
March/April 2007
The English Professor's Tale
A politicized guide to Chaucer.
by Tom Shippey
March/April 2007
How to Read
Pay attention to pronouns.
by Alan Jacobs
March/April 2007
Singing of War
Why there's a course on war poetry at West Point.
by Peggy Rosenthal
November/December 2006
A Tale of Two Utopias
Jules Verne sans Captain Nemo.
by Ross Douthat
September/October 2006
Boyz N the Greenwood
Steven Lawhead begins a trilogy on Robin Hood.
by Tom Shippey
September/October 2006
Down the Rabbit-Hole
The life and work of John Tenniel.
by Edward Short
September/October 2006
So Wide and Deep
The Booker Prize-winning novel by John Banville.
by Betty Smartt Carter
March/April 2006
Trouble in the Heartland
New fiction from Vinita Hampton Wright.
by Lauren F. Winner
March/April 2006
Double Helix
Cain and Abel revisited.
by Abram Van Engen
March/April 2006
Politics & Petunias
Wayne Booth reconsidered.
By Craig Mattson
January/February 2006
Bran Flakes and Harmless Drudges
Dr. Johnson and his Dictionary.
by Alan Jacobs
January/February 2006
Losing "Greyhoundy"
How the OED was made.
by Andrea R. Nagy
January/February 2006
Enchanted
The life of C. S. Lewis' imagination.
by Don King
January/February 2006
Lewis as Mystic
Mystical? C. S. Lewis?
by Michael Ward
January/February 2006
The Nature of Redemption
The life and art of Henry Roth.
By Abram Van Engen
January/February 2006
The Taste of Different Fears
By N. D. Wilson
January/February 2006
Terrorism in Literature
Not just the usual suspects.
By John Utz
November/December 2005
POETRY
Understanding GRAVITY
By Aaron Rench
November/December 2005
Opportunity Costs
What does it profit a man to defeat the Dark Lord but lose his soul?
By Alan Jacobs
November/December 2005
Mitford Rules
Jan Karon and the clerical novel.
By Lauren F. Winner
November/December 2005
Fire Consuming Fire
Poems for Yom Kippur.
By Laurance Wieder
November/December 2005
Orphan in the Storm
Melville and the crisis of moral authority.
By Roger Lundin
September/October 2005
The Exasperated Knight of the Sorrowful Face
A new translation of Don Quixote.
By Laurance Wieder
September/October 2005
"Leave the Path"
Beth Kephart's garden walks.
By Cindy Crosby
September/October 2005
Poetry
The Serpent Speaks
By Robert Siegel
September/October 2005
Spinning a Tale
The unobtrusive perfection of Charlotte's Web.
By Lauren F. Winner
September/October 2005
Original Misunderstanding
Bret Lott's The Difference Between Women and Men.
By Susan Wise Bauer
September/October 2005
Living with a Big Poem
Reflections on The Waste Land.
By Daniel Taylor
September/October 2005
Laughing in Eden
The life and art of P. G. Wodehouse.
By C. Stephen Evans
September/October 2005
Another Day, Another Dolor
Ogden Nash and the lost tradition of light verse.
By Brooke Allen
September/October 2005
How the Brothers Grimm Overthrew the Evil Empire
A fairy tale.
By David Marshall
September/October 2005
Listening for Another Reality
Adapting George MacDonald for radio.
By Philip Glassborow
September/October 2005
The Lost Sheep
A bittersweet exodus from fundamentalism.
By Betty Smartt Carter
September/October 2005
The Game Is Afoot
Sherlock Holmes returns—again.
By John Utz
July/August 2005
Only Connect
Two novels about finding—or failing to find—a structure of meaning in the mess and confusion of our lives.
By Betty Smartt Carter
July/August 2005
Holy Animals
The stories of Joy Williams.
By Sara Miller
May/June 2005
Missing Persons
A novel set against Liberia's brutal civil war.
By John Utz
March/April 2005
To Skellig Michael, Monastery in the Sky
In search of sacred places.
By Daniel Taylor
March/April 2005
Poetry
Narration
By Scott Cairns
March/April 2005
This Poor Gray Ember of Creation
Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is a novel to savor.
By Thomas Gardner
March/April 2005
Poetry
What James Didn't Say About the Tongue
By Luci Shaw
January/February 2005
Poetry
Nokukhanya's Pickled Thumb
By John Shaw
January/February 2005
Poetry
Nihongan Altar
for Makoto Fujimura
By Marly Youmans
January/February 2005
Poetry
Tears of a Boy, Age Six
By Marly Youmans
January/February 2005
The Lost World of John Clare
In love with nature, haunted by madness.
By Michael R. Stevens
January/February 2005
For Everything There Is a Season
Nostalgia for nature's seasons in a climate-controlled world.
By Cindy Crosby
November/December 2004
Poetry
Christmas Green
By Scott Cairns
November/December 2004
Poetry
Tabloid Poems
I Want to Have a Space Alien's Baby
By John Leax
November/December 2004
The Spy Who Loved Me
What's real in espionage fiction?
By Jim Ohlson
November/December 2004
Preemptive Prophecy
In the Turkish city of Kars, schoolgirls forced to abandon their headscarves are killing themselves. A poet who is also a journalist is sent to cover the story.
By Laurance Wieder
November/December 2004
The Faith of Shakespeare
Awe and reconciliation in the work of "WS."
By Larry Woiwode
September/October 2004
Poetry
Upon Avon
By Paul J. Willis
September/October 2004
An Alternative Africa
The world of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.
By Susan VanZanten Gallagher
September/October 2004
Poetry
Tabloid Poems
Montana Police Shoot Bigfoot
By John Leax
September/October 2004
Raising the Near Dead
An art restorer in search of a person restorer.
By A.G. Harmon
July/August 2004
Poetry
Tabloid Poems
Meet the Amazing Half Man Half Pig
By John Leax
July/August 2004
Omit Unnecessary Words
On the trail of faith and writing.
By Andy Crouch
July/August 2004
The Sage of Walden Pond
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well."
By Lauren F. Winner
July/August 2004
The Lord of Limit
Is Geoffrey Hill "the greatest living English poet"?
By Alan Jacobs
May/June 2004
After Theory, Theology?
Pauline self-abandonment as a response to postmodern nihilism.
By Eugene McCarraher
May/June 2004
Fever Dream
A parable of the new South Africa.
Tim Stafford
March/April 2004
Murder, She Wrote
P.D. James' masterful detection of the primal sin.
by Ralph Wood
March/April 2004
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) Preaches a Sermon that Will Never Appear in an Anthology of American Literature
by Mark Noll
March/April 2004
The Not-So-Dismal Science
Using literature to enliven economics.
by Andrew P. Morriss
March/April 2004
Food Porn
The secret life of chick lit.
by Susan Wise Bauer
March/April 2004
Why Everyone Used to Read Updike …
And why his best stories are still worth reading.
by Mark Oppenheimer
January/February 2004
How to Disappear
The restless art of Weldon Kees, "pursued for mortal stakes."
by Caroline Langston
January/February 2004
After Babel
Two Arab poets—one Palestinian, the other Iraqi—and the vicissitudes of exile and translation.
by Laurance Wieder
September/October 2003
The Right Stuff
Writers rediscover the pleasure of telling a story.
S. T. Karnick
September/October 2003
Rue for A. E. Housman
Marly Youmans
July/August 2003
Thomas the Unbeliever
A new doubting Thomas finds few answers.
Garrett Brown
July/August 2003
The Cossacks' Iliad
Gogol and the making of Russian literature.
J. Bottum
July/August 2003
Mercy
A murderous saint's life.
Robert Siegel
July/August 2003
Impersonations
The restless journey of a Holocaust descendant
Betty Smartt Carter
July/August 2003
Before Left Behind
It's not easy to say something new about the end of the world.
Crawford Gribben
July/August 2003
Faith in Poetry
Religious language, believing and non-.
by Otto Selles
May/June 2003
Daddy Long Legs
by Robert Siegel
May/June 2003
Long Live the Queen
Elizabeth I in her own words.
Jill Peláez Baumgaertner
May/June 2003
Led by the Blind
Visionary writing despite the loss of sight.
Virginia Stem Owens
May/June 2003
I Want
Thou shalt not covet.
Sarah Hinlicky Wilson
May/June 2003
The Holy Ghost School
Four Catholic writers and their shared vocation.
Lauren F. Winner
May/June 2003
Living Like a Man
Andre Dubus and the lessons of brokenness.
by Christina Bieber
May/June 2003
Let Us Prey
The menace of nanotechnology in storytelling and science.
by C. Christopher Hook
March/April 2003
The Groves of Academe
Arguing About God, Arguing with God: Remembering Lew Smedes.
by Richard Mouw
March/April 2003
The Re-Invention of Lovee
Piecing together the ancient poetic fragments of Sappho.
by Alan Jacobs
March/April 2003
Reading Dostoevsky Religiously
In both senses of the word.?
by Daniel J. Mahoney
January/February 2003
Stranger in a Strange Land
Two Icons
by Scott Cairns
November/December 2002
Twice Chosen
A young convert to Orthodox Judaism converts to Christianity.
by Betty Smartt Carter
November/December 2002
Uncompromising Positions
Hitchens and Orwell.
by Preston Jones
November/December 2002
On Foot
The virtues of walking.
by Pual Willis
September/October 2002
The Enigma of Anger
Reflections on a sometimes deadly sin.
by Garret Keizer
September/October 2002
"Try to Praise the Mutilated World"
A conversation with poet Adam Zagajewski.
interview by Agnieszka Tennant
September/October 2002
Pastel Covers, Real People
What I learned from reading 34 Christian novels.
by Andy Crouch
July/August 2002
Looking Up from the Navel
Three novels that get out and about.
by Betty Smartt Carter
July/August 2002
Reading, Writing, and Charity
A theology of reading
by Mark Wahlout
July/August 2002
The Bird Who Married a Blue Light
A story.
by Diane Glancy
July/August 2002
John Ruskin's Fierce Sadness
The "unconversion" of a Victorian prophet.
by James Turner
May/June 2002
Hamlet in New Orleans
A conversation with novelist and playwright Elizebeth Dewberry.
by Lucas E. Morel
May/June 2002
"Not First in Words but in Flesh"
Language and truth in the Christian literary tradition.
by Stephen N. Williams
January/February 2002
Tolkien Canonized
Should the creator of The Lord of The Rings be acknowledged as the foremost author of the twentieth century?
by Aaron Belz
January/February 2002
Wole Soyinka’s Outrage
The divided soul of Nigeria’s Nobel laureate.
by Alan Jacobs
November/December 2001
The Last Catholic Writer in America?
Estranged and independent.
by Paul Elie
November/December 2001
John Tokyo in the Letter Read
How Japanese and English—and all other languages—follow the same basic principles despite their bewildering variety.
by John H. McWhorter
November/December 2001
Edward Said: Secular Protestant
The world's most famous English professor, and its most famous Palestinian after Yasir Arafat.
by Mark Walhout
September/October 2001
Emily Dickinson's Hidden God
The life and ambivalent faith of America's greatest poet.
by Grant Wacker
July/August 2001
Bookshelf: The American Revolution
The past two to three years has witnessed a full crop of works on the American Revolution, of which a few can be mentioned here as samples of a luxuriant growth of scholarship and as a supplement to the published essays that appeared in the July/August 2001 issue of Books & Culture. A Web Exclusive.
by Mark Noll
July 18, 2001
The Voice That Found Her
Native American novelist and poet Diane Glancy writes by listening.
by Wendy Murray Zoba
May/June 2001
Restoration
Poetry
by J. Bottum
March/April 2001
The Womb Bomber
"The first time Ernetta Ducksworth visited Washington, D.C., she drove up in the truck with Arvin and marched in a crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue, carrying a sign that read 'America Whore of Babylon When Will You Stop Your Infant Sacrifice?'" A Web-exclusive novel.
by Mary Carter
February 7, 2001
Postmodern Hamlet
Can Shakespeare survive the dissolution of the self?
by Debra Rienstra
January/February 2001
Librarian of Babel
The Gnostic imagination of Jorge Luis Borges.
by Robert Royal
January/February 2001
death drops
Poetry
by Otto Selles
January/February 2001
A Gift of Life
Poems inspired by Vermeer's paintings of women. A Web Exclusive.
by Daniel Taylor
December 13, 2000
Poetry: Why Bother?
Reading for "soul-culture."
by Luci Shaw
November/December 2000
The Two Eliots
"To all appearances," a biographer writes, "Eliot was conventional, mild, decorous, yet the hidden character was daring and savage."
by Jewel Spears Brooker
November/December 2000
The Bones in Mr. Eliot's Closet
Rediscovering the patron saint of all the flawed and haunted
seekers of modernity.
by Michael R. Stevens
November/December 2000
I Gave This Day to God
Poetry
by Luci Shaw
November/December 2000
The Uncensored Merton
An intimate glimpse of spiritual writer Thomas Merton.
by Timothy Jones
November/December 2000
Mandela's Miracle
Mandela: The Authorized Biography by Anthony Sampson
by Joel Carpenter
September/October 2000
Go East, Young Man
Trekking to the Holy Land.
American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania by Hilton Obenzinger
by Bruce Kuklick
September/October 2000
Urbane Bigotry
The Close: A Young Woman's First Year at Seminary by Chloe Breyer
by Sarah E. Hinlicky
September/October 2000
SWF Seeks Marriage Partner
I've got it all. So why do I want a husband?
Wing To Wing, Oar To Oar: Readings On Courting and Marrying edited by Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass
by Sarah E. Hinlicky
July/August 2000
The Man Who Was Thursday
Revisiting Chesterton's masterpiece.
by Martin Gardner
July/August 2000
A Sabbath Vision
Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 by Wendell Berry
by Lionel Basney
July/August 2000
Theological Lawbreaker?
A response to Stephen Williams.
by John Sanders
January/February 2000
Missions Improbable
A stickler for accuracy flubs her facts, while a producer of page-turners leaves his readers reflective
by Wendy Murray Zoba
September/October 1999
A Hermeneutic of Faith
Bringing Christian understanding to the study of literature
by Emily Griesinger
July/August 1999
The Word Made Flesh
For the writer, working in metaphor is a life-and-death matter.
by Larry Woiwode
July/August 1999
Ruler of a Thousand Worlds
The odyssey of Robert Silverberg, virtuoso of speculative fiction, from prodigy to jaded prizewinner to wily old wizard.
by Keith Call
March/April 1999
Necessary Fictions
Never mind the flap over the Modern Library 100. Why read novels at all?
by Harold Fickett
January/February 1999
The Editor and the Exile
How the New Yorker's William Shawn gave a home to the brilliant autobiographer Ved Mehta.
by Alan Jacobs
November/December 1998
Bonhoeffer: Factual Fictions
"I confess, I often cast my own life in dramatic prose. Having read Swann's Way and To the Lighthouse, I know the trick of elevating an ordinary moment by sticking it into narrative … "
by Betty Smartt Carter
September/October 1998
His Majesty's Sacred Service
Susan Howatch weaves a tangled spiritual web for her Anglican clerics.
by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
September/October 1998
Dogbert v. Machiavelli
"Who is more Machiavellian? A new book argues that Niccolo is actually virtuous—so Dilbert's sidekick wins again … "
by Richard J. Mouw
May/June 1998
A Wrinkle in Faith
The unique spiritual pilgrimage of Madeleine L'Engle.
by Donald Hettinga
May/June 1998
Jesus in Mississippi
The civil rights movement as theological drama.
by Charles Marsh
March/April 1998
Color Blind?
What's wrong with the conservative line on race.
by Glenn C. Loury
March/April 1998
The Burden of the Black Leader
Torn between the demands of black nationalism and American democracy.
by Willie James Jennings
March/April 1998
Bookshelf: Essential Reading on the American Dilemma
Essential Reading on the American Dilemma
by the editors
March/April 1998
Narcissism, American Style
Established novelists who write poetry are like movie stars who really want to direct.
by Laurance Wieder
March/April 1998
Poetry for Dummies
I was aware that the poetry industry had gone through a number of software upgrades since I last twirled an "oftimes."
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
March/April 1998
Soulless
If consciousness is only an illusion, it's the greatest mistake human beings have ever made.
by Allen C. Guelzo
January/February 1998
Secular Saint
Milton said that a good poet must first be a good man. Wallace Stegner is one of the few twentieth-century writers who took this to heart.
by Paul Willis
January/February 1998
Of Sin and Horses
The compelling world of Dick Francis's mysteries.
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
January/February 1998
Expelled from the Garden
A novel with a large vision, set on the American frontier.
by Caroline Langston
January/February 1998
The Children's Story of Divorce
Liberation is the dominant theme in the adult literature on divorce. Children's books tell a different story.
by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
November/December 1997
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