Something about the subject of translation seems to unhinge vulnerable minds. A case in point is David Bentley Hart's review (Commonweal, July 16, 2010) of David Slavitt's translation of Orlando Furioso, ...

If you've missed Tana French, go pick up In The Woods, then The Likeness, and then get her just-released Faithful Place. Each of the novels is narrated by a different Irish cop. In the Woods gave us young ...

Among immigrants aspiring to brave futures in the land of the free, few are as controversial or as mobile as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As a child, Hirsi Ali lived in Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Kenya. As a young ...

It wasn't until after I read Ted Striphas' book The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control that I realized that its title and subtitle are somewhat at odds with each other. ...

How to cultivate a “culture of resurrection.”

In The Shadow of the Antichrist: Nietzsche's Critique of Christianity—a Christianity Today Book Award-winner—Stephen Williams not only dispels some commonly held misconceptions about Friedrich ...

"Is the life of the mind a history of interesting mistakes?" So Hugh Kenner asked in The Pound Era. More particularly, he wondered, "is the surest way to a fructive western idea the misunderstanding of ...

Advertising campaigns are part of our modern cultural memory. The phrase "Can you hear me now?" is no longer a question, but a subconscious trigger to check your cell phone connection. Despite the pervasiveness ...

Last summer I attended the National Vacation Matters Summit. Sponsored by Take Back Your Time, an organization that advocates for more paid time off for American workers, it was a good place to learn ...

An imaginative biography of the medieval visionary.

With its ominous title and front-cover description ("Medicine disregarded it … Antibiotics can't control it …"), Maryn McKenna's Superbug is packaged as a bio-thriller. In this literary ...

I'm a sucker for any fantasy book whose cover shows a dreamy castle tucked away in a sinister landscape. There has to be a tyrant somewhere, captive people or talking animals, and heroic fighters who ...

It's pretty rare that I read a new volume of poetry straight through, but that is how I sat with Jehanne Dubrow's Stateside last Thursday.

In this absorbing volume, Dubrow, whose husband is an officer ...

Bittersweet is a good word to use when speaking of baseball, a measured and modulated word that connotes ups and downs. But the word tends toward darkness rather than light, tugs harshly at the scales; ...

In 2005, Gina Welch put on ugly buckled loafers and a loose purple sweater and joined Thomas Road Baptist Church. She also grew out her short hair, gained some weight (her "temporary church body"), and ...

A response to Brad A. Greenberg’s Wall Street Journal essay, “How Missionaries Lost Their Chariots of Fire.”

In this Graf Spee of a book the author has managed to wound me at every turn. Which is odd, since I'm the reviewer of her dreams. Edith Grossman doesn't know me in person, but I too am a translator, prepared ...

In the 1850s, a lawyer named Elias Drake opened a resort in Ohio called Tawawa. It was frequented by northern and southern guests alike, who came to the resort to take the healing waters found in area ...

"World Cup" implies
Testicles
Of unusual size.

Jack Rakove, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Original Meanings (1996), takes a muted approach in his new book on the Founding Fathers. "The men who took commanding roles in the American Revolution ...