'Brighton Rock' made me feel ready to become a Catholic after so many years of deliberately not being one. I, too, frequently felt lost and agnostic. The story of Rose and Pinkie—so similar, so different, both human—was like a piece I found that had been missing from my puzzle.

I was well into adulthood before I realized the co-author of my battered copy of The Elements of Style was also the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.

This review by Andre Dubus III of Alice Munro’s short story collection ‘Open Secrets’ was originally published in America magazine in 1995. Ms. Munro, a Nobel Laureate and acclaimed author, died on May 13, 2024, at 92.

Ric Burns’s splendid two-part PBS documentary, “Dante: Inferno to Paradise,” has brought Dante’s achievement beyond the groves of academe and into America’s living rooms.

John Cogley was once called “the most prominent American Roman Catholic journalist of his generation.” The onetime executive editor of Commonweal also played a key role in the election of J.F.K.

Ron Hansen has written award-winning novels that have been turned into Hollywood hits. As an ordained deacon, he crafts equally compelling homilies.