Brooding, dark, and sardonic, the outsized heroes of Byron’s great poems “Childe Harold” and “Manfred” are rebellious individuals who live by their own moral codes. The spawn of these Byronic heroes populate not only Victorian... Read More

The film-star subject of this splendid biography is often remembered as the tough-talking gangster who, along with James Cagney, Paul Muni, and Leo Gorcey, made the underworld of crime and the mob a vicariously thrilling world. As the... Read More

In his provocative map of the current religious landscape, The Next Christendom, religion writer Philip Jenkins pointed out that the future of the Christian religion lay not in the often wooden and lifeless practices of North American... Read More

What is the ultimate basis of the moral life? Does the moral life presuppose a deep spiritual reality? Is it religious in character? Or is it enough to think of ethics in purely philosophical or even just sociological terms? In this much... Read More

In a world where extremists often act out in violent ways against other religions and other cultures in the name of their own beliefs religious leaders attempt to find ways to establish and practice tolerance if not acceptance. This is... Read More

When Johnny Cash died in 2003, he left a gaping hole not only in the fabric of country music but also in the crazy quilt of American popular culture. The Man in Black, guitar slung over his shoulder like a gunfighter striding into town... Read More

During the years leading up to the Civil War and in the years immediately following it, various Christian groups used the Bible either to support slavery or to condemn it. One hundred years later during the struggle for Civil Rights,... Read More

What kind of food will people eat in the future? Will it be healthful? Will there be enough? Who should be growing the food, and where should it be grown? Is there any difference in the food quality and environmental effects of family... Read More