An important international conference in Rome on May 21 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Plenary Council of the Catholic Church in China. Here’s what you need to know.

Of the many things that the history of eugenics should teach modern society, two stand out. First, not all questions are good questions. Second, statistics can be warped to tell you pretty much anything you want.

Books about World War II are ubiquitous in the nonfiction section, but "Hitler's American Gamble" is the rare recent work with a genuinely new contribution to make, not just to our understanding of the past but also to our understanding of the present.

An account of “what it meant to be a Roman emperor,” Mary Beard's new book is also a sustained exploration of tradition embodied by an individual ruler.

The Catholic Church has communicated with its flock throughout the centuries by means of papal bulls. But what on earth is a papal bull?

With “Cowboy Carter,” her eighth studio album, Beyoncé not only explores the longed-for and carelessly and/or intentionally erased Black past in country music, but also moves the genre forward into a hopefully more expansive future.