The Bible Refreshed

The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible by Sarah Ruden. Pantheon Books, 2017. Hardcover, 232 pages, $27. ELIZABETH BITTNER “I have no formal qualifications whatsoever as a biblical scholar—not one degree, not even a single course credit.”...

Political Thinking from the Hillbilly Thomist

A Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor edited by Henry T. Edmonson III. The University Press of Kentucky, 2017. Hardcover, 398 pages, $60. Reviewed by KARL C. SCHAFFENBURG This volume represents the latest addition to an ongoing series from the University Press of...

Lectures on What Can’t Be Taught

Literature Class by Julio Cortázar. New Directions, 2017. Paperback, 280 pages, $19. The question of whether or not creative writing is something that can be taught isn’t a perennial one, at least not explicitly or directly. The American MFA program, with its tens of...

Recovering Thoreau

TweetHenry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls. University of Chicago Press, 2017. Hardcover, 640 pages, $35. Reviewed by John Byron Kuhner Of all the great American writers, I think I pity Henry David Thoreau the most. Long paired by curriculum writers with...

A Great Story, Almost

Beren and Lúthien by J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Hardcover, 288 pages, $30. Reviewed by Ben Reinhard Beren and Lúthien stands out among the posthumous Tolkien publications of the last decade or so. Unlike The...