There are two schools of American history Oneconservative nationalistic mythmakingcelebrates America as the city on the hill a land of liberty and escape from European tyranny The otherradical iconoclastic demythologizingviews the United States as the last global empire and laments its oppres

Louis-Marie Chauvet professor of sacramental theology at the Institut Catholique in Paris is not widely known this side of the Atlantic His first work published in the United States Symbol and Sacrament A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence caught the eye of many sacramental th

It was 1998 the Welfare Reform Bill had just passed and the writer Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to know how the four million women about to be booted into the labor market were going to make it on 6 or 7 an hour When the question came up over lunch with Harper rsquo s editor Lewis Lapham she sugge

The Sri Lakshmi Temple is a popular center for the worship of the goddess Lakshmi known for her graciousness and generosity Tamil-speaking Hindu priests perform the daily and festival rituals while Hindus young and old come from neighboring towns to beg her favor and celebrate her glory To Lakshm

In 1996 Jack Miles won the Pulitzer Prize for biography with a learned gripping semi-plausible flight of fancy Since the Hebrew Bible is doubtlessamong other thingsa collection of stories about a figure or figures Elohim Yahweh El Shaddai etc whom Westerners have agreed to call God Miles p

T C Boyle rsquo s collected short stories 1998 amply confirmed his impressive imagination and facility with language and narration In these 16 new ones nine of which appeared in The New Yorker in recent years Boyle again displays his ease in entering the minds of his principal characters and