Amy L. Wax

Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriageby stephen macedoprinceton, 320 pages, $29.95 Before the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the law of most states restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples. Now that the Court has held that the Constitution . . . . Continue Reading »

In a recent article in the “New York Review of Books” on the television and stage adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s historical novels “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies,” the Irish critic Fintan O’Toole tries to explain the present popularity of a story about Henry VIII’s obscure . . . . Continue Reading »

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty? by leigh ann wheeler? oxford, 352 pages, $34.95 The 2013 Oscar ceremony, says Ross Douthat, revealed “the movie business’s essential schizophrenia, which is also the schizophrenia of post-1960s cultural liberalism writ large.” On display were “the . . . . Continue Reading »

This book, like my three children, frequently gave me a headache. Just as I was oblivious for much of my life to the problems posed by bearing and rearing children, so humankind was blissfully undisturbed for most of its history by the conundrums this book addresses. Why have children? Why have them now rather than later, or more rather than fewer, or a child one knows will be impaired? Why have them at all? … Continue Reading »

Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate by Christine Overall MIT, 272 pages, $27.95 This book, like my three children, frequently gave me a headache. Just as I was oblivious for much of my life to the problems posed by bearing and rearing children, so humankind was blissfully undisturbed for most of . . . . Continue Reading »