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Articles
Lupine Lessons
The Rise of Wolf 8:Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone’s Underdogby rick mcintyregreystone books, 304 pages, $26.90 The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Packby rick...
The Internet Novel Comes of Age
No One Is Talking About Thisby patricia lockwood riverhead, 224 pages, $25 Chosen Spirits by samit basusimon and schuster, 280 pages, $13.92 A half-century after ARPANET created networks of computers, the “Internet...
Capitalist Horror
Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God. You shall not do any work, either...
Specter of the Beatitudes
Workers’ Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britainedited by michael rosenprinceton, 328 pages, $19.95 When I was a girl, I had a picture book, The Day the...
Confession in America
Confession: Catholics, Repentance, and Forgiveness in Americaby patrick w. careyoxford, 392 pages, $34.95 In the 2013 Joseph Gordon-Levitt romantic comedy Don Jon, the porn-obsessed title character hits the confessional,...
Hour of the Wolf
Earlier this year I edited an anthology, Christ’s Body, Christ’s Wounds: Staying Catholic When You’ve Been Hurt in the Church. The essays and poetry in the anthology explored how...
Witch Camp
I Am Not a Witch, the brilliant feature debut of Zambian-Welsh writer and director Rungano Nyoni, is a satire with the haunting, surreal sensibility of a fairy tale. A...
Be Literal
A Book of American Martyrsby joyce carol oatesecco, 752 pages, $29.99 A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates’s novel about the shooting of an abortionist by a Christian “Soldier...
Work Is a Four-Letter Word
The Animatorsby kayla rae whitakerrandom house, 284 pages, $27 It may be gauche to say that novels should be moral tales; but nothing can compete with morality for dramatic...
The First Responder
Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box To the priest—he’s the doctor—he can handle the shocks —Peter Gabriel, “Mercy Street” You can talk to me. I’m...
Into the Swamp
In the 1990s, journalist Lawrence Wechsler began teaching college courses on “Settling Accounts with the Prior Regime.” “[I]t became almost a game,” he wrote: He’d ask each class what...
Theology of the Booty
They’re Cows, We’re Pigsby carmen boullosagrove press, 192 pages, $12 A few years ago, the website You Had One Job posted a Disney cartoon in which children with headkerchiefs...
Corruptible Crown
I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown; where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world. —Charles I, on the scaffold The most reactionary thing about...
Roe’s Missing Stories
Roe, the new play from Lisa Loomer about the woman at the heart of the 1973 Supreme Court case legalizing abortion, is much like its main subject: easily distracted,...
Junior Varsity Angel Wrestling Team
The last thing you see in writer-director Stephen Cone’s 2011 film The Wise Kids is its dedication: to the former members of the youth ministry at a Baptist church...