Michael S. Dukakis delivered this address to the Kenna Club at Santa Clara University in California on Feb. 28, 1997.

The "national pastime" has occasioned more intellectual rumination than any other athletic endeavor in American—perhaps even world—history. Intellectuals and sports writers have turned the metaphysical implications of the game into something of a cottage industry.

From 1957, a classic essay by Flannery O'Connor, who died 50 years ago on Sunday.

The novelist had a driving conviction that ran roughshod over our weak-kneed answers.

Alice McDermott has once again delivered a novel to ponder and cherish, from its moral quandaries down to its wry humor and hypnotic prose.

While Strout’s masterful design draws us in, it is the searing emotional specificity of her language that captures us.