Finding Faith in Fiction
Wondrous Reading: Encountering the Catholic Faith in Children’s Literature By LuElla D’Amico. Cascade Books, 2025. Paperback, 162 pages, $23. Reviewed by Christine Norvell. A Presbyterian minister told me that many of the young parents in her inner city church...
The Liturgical Key to Tolkien
The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination By Ben Reinhard. Emmaus Road Publishing, 2025. Hardcover, 184 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Benjamin J. Volpe. “My living room bookcase has an entire shelf filled with Tolkien’s works and works commenting on Tolkien’s...
To Find Eyes to See
More Than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature By Joshua Hren. Word on Fire Luminor, 2026. Paperback, 392 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Nadya Williams. The year after Euripides died (406 BC), Athenian theater-goers who flocked to see...
Rural America as It Really Is
Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America By Joanna Dee Das. University of Chicago Press, 2025. Hardcover, 272 pages, $27.50. Reviewed by Jason C. Phillips. Over the last eighteen months, I have twice visited Branson, Missouri. Over the...
The Poet Watches Birds
Instructions for Waking By Jennifer A. Hartenburg. Kelsay Books, 2026. Paperback, 70 pages, $20. Reviewed by Matt Miller. I’m not much of a birdwatcher. We keep a few feeders, and I’m always pleased to spot a bald eagle, a pileated woodpecker, or a Baltimore oriole....
"A more than occasional glutton for punishment, Field dips into and out of conservative conferences, the better to enable herself to assert herself into this story. No doubt those on the left will be mostly pleased by what they read in these pages, while those on the right will
[F]or all their handwringing about the red-state barbarians at the gates, Chemerinsky and Gillman cannot or will not see what their own argument and their own evidence of student, faculty, and administrator behavior show to even a mildly attentive reader: The greatest enemies of