Books & Culture articles

Recent articles from Books & Culture

Re-emergence.
May 1, 2009... In the reemergence of Christianity's presence in art, 2007 was a remarkable year. In its year-in-review, Artforum, a preeminent contemporary art magazine that has been inhospitable to issues of religion, named Gerhard Richter's stained glass window for Cologne Cathedral 2007's "best" work....

Culprit-in-chief.
May 1, 2009... It was mid-January, 1862, and a Baltimore dentist was writing grudgingly to his clergyman brother, first to congratulate him on the birth of a son, and then to chide him for his hostility to the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Yes. Lincoln had suspended the writ of habeas corpus and...

The nature of things.(philosophy of life, and works of Lucretius and Boethius)
March 1, 2009... Our story begins--but when does our story begin? With the Big Bang? Or before the foundation of the world? Or... ? In the first century before Christ (I quote from the front matter to Ronald Melville's verse translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in the Oxford World Classics edition,...

A Shambling Magnificence.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... Editor's note: The first sentence of John McWhorter's review in our previous issue provoked many letters to the editor, of which one representative example appears below, with a response from McWhorter. Are you old enough to recall the brouhaha surrounding Webster's Third? [ILLUSTRATION...

John McWhorter replies.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... The idea that English pronouns must be used categorically according to whether they are "subject" or "object" forms is a fiction that has unfortunately been foisted on the English-speaking world for centuries. Latin pronouns happen to work that way, and long-dead pedants decided that English...