Alice McDermott rsquo s new novel After This vividly often heart-rendingly portrays roughly 25 years up through 1977 in the lives of the Keane family John and Mary and their four children Jacob Michael Annie and Clare The novel rsquo s Irish-Catholic Long Island milieu will be familiar to

In the highly charged and fertile theological world out of which Vatican II was born there was widespread agreement that the Catholic Church needed to rethink itself Stale Thomistic recitations seemed out of step with emerging ways of looking at Christ the world the liturgy the role of both ord

If asked ldquo Who is Satan rdquo most of us might give an answer something like this Satan or the Devil is the fallen angel who persuaded Adam and Eve to commit the ldquo original sin rdquo Also known as the Antichrist and Lucifer he now presides over hell and entices people on earth to sin

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the most controversialand courageousthinker to address the status of Muslims in Western societies today Born in Somalia and raised a Muslim she fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage As an interpreter for Somali refugees she gained firsthand experience c

Although the Bush administration has been in a snit about The New York Times rsquo s recent revelations of government spying on Americans and the surveillance of the banking records of presumed terrorists the president has actually had an easy time of it with the Fourth Estate according to Eric Bo

Although it may be hard to imagine a volume on the construction of St Peter rsquo s Basilica as a beach book R A Scotti has produced an account gripping enough to be one The subtitle The Splendor and the Scandal hints at its focus This is not a dry account for the architectural journals but