In the Los Angeles area a community of observant Jews wants to bring picnic baskets to the beach on Saturdays Surprisingly this has put them at odds with both the Sierra Club and the staff of the California Coastal Commission According to Talmud a Jew may not schlep anything outside his home on

A review of Philip Jenkins's book on Europe and Islam

The two key words in the title of David Mamets new book Bambi vs Godzilla On the Nature Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business are movie and business The screenwriter and director hates the businessor what passes for business but is really the struggle for poweraspect of making movies So

As soon as I began to read the very first of these poems by John Hennessy ldquo Signing the Kills rdquo I had to get out a map of the New Jersey shore to find where the Rahway River emerges across from Staten Island and along the Arthur Kill Then I needed the dictionary to inform me that ldqu

Several years ago I was in Rocky Sullivans pub on Lexington Avenue in New York City for one of their famed literary readings The Irish-born writer Colum McCann was said to be unveiling an excerpt from a work in progress By then McCannin such novels as Songdogs and This Side of Brightness and story

Alice Munro is at the height of her powers as a short story writer in this collection, navigating with extraordinary agility the border between memoir and fiction.