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'For Such a Time' by Kate Breslin

Is Esther the right model for the heroine of a Christian romance novel?

The Jewish experience might be a good fit for Christian marketing, but like the real victims of the Holocaust, we may soon find ourselves absented from our own narrative.

Wendy Rosenfield

Sep 15, 2015 Articles 5 minute read

Kennedy and Johnson during the 1960 campaign. (Photo via jfklibrary.org)

Godfrey Hodgson's 'JFK and LBJ'

The last two great presidents?

Was John Kennedy's popularity deserved? Or should it have gone to his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson?

Armen Pandola

Sep 08, 2015 Articles 6 minute read

The effect of Dylan’s ’65 Newport set was, well, electric. (Photo of Dylan in Toronto in 1980 by Jean-Luc via Creative Commons/Flickr)

Elijah Wald's 'Dylan Goes Electric!'

Electric Bob

Dylan made it okay to like rock ’n’ roll. He carried the intellectual endorsements to make those who’d disparaged or abandoned rock regard it anew. And he had the genius to make those still-popping fingers rethink rock’s capabilities.

Bob Levin

Sep 04, 2015 Articles 5 minute read

Edith Wharton, whose marriage, apparently, doesn't count.

Kate Bolick's 'Spinster'

The solipsistic spinster

Kate Bolick takes almost 300 pages to analyze her decision not to marry from every possible angle in Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, while remaining oblivious to her level of privilege.

Judy Weightman

Aug 25, 2015 Articles 5 minute read

Gregory Peck and kids in 'Mockingbird': A vested interest in a fantasy family.

‘Mockingbird’ meets ‘Call It Sleep’

Who silenced Harper Lee?

Why would a successful writer like Harper Lee forsake her chosen craft for more than 50 years? Consider a very similar case — Henry Roth, author of the classic Call It Sleep.

Dan Rottenberg

Aug 25, 2015 Articles 7 minute read

Alice Lee (above) had a legacy to protect. That required muzzling her younger sister Harper. (Photo: Ainsley Bennet /Landov/Barcroft.)

Harper Lee’s sister: Protector or warden?

Found: The real villain of the Mockingbird mystery

Why the sudden publication of Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, an aged recluse who had long insisted she would never write another book? No doubt the key event was the death last year of Harper Lee’s older sister Alice. But my perspective as a family therapist suggests that Alice wasn't Harper's protector, but her oppressor.

SaraKay Smullens

Aug 21, 2015 Articles 9 minute read

A combine harvesting wheat in eastern Washington. (Photo by Charles Knowles via Creative Commons/Wikimedia)

The Sloan Technology Series

Beach reading for the technological society

Thanks to the Sloan Foundation, anyone who enjoys reading histories and biographies can delve into the sagas behind the technologies that shape the modern world.

Tom Purdom

Aug 11, 2015 Articles 4 minute read

'Disgruntled' and 'The Star Side of Bird Hill'

The complexities of coming-of-age

Asali Solomon and Naomi Jackson have written similar yet different coming-of-age stories about young women confronting many identities while trying to find their own.

Aja Beech

Aug 09, 2015 Articles 2 minute read

Former lovers meet in “a cinematic version of a quaint English village.” (Fairy-tale architecture in Carmel; photo by Jim Nix via Creative Commons/Flickr)

‘All the Old Knives’ by Olen Steinhauer

“Maybe love isn’t the way to live”

Imagine your job involves arranging the end of your favorite lover ever; then, imagine you have to question that person first.

Rick Soisson

Aug 01, 2015 Articles 3 minute read

John F. Kasson's 'Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression'

The meaning of Shirley Temple

Shirley Temple struck a chord with the moviegoing public: 1935 was the first of her four-year run as the top box-office star in the country. Her appeal wasn’t just about her innocence, argues John Kasson in his outstanding analysis — she was a powerful political and economic symbol during the Depression.