2019 Books of the Year
Great books tell stories. Here’s our pick of vivid and insightful new releases for better understanding America, world events, history, science, and theology
Autumn of a book-lover's contentment
Proven authors pour forth titles this season, and a notable children's author reaches The End: Just who is Lemony Snicket?
Decisive battles
Only a handful of races will determine which party controls the House for the next two years
Squaring a salamander
How one state learned to take the politicking out of redistricting
Evangelism for introverts
Author and speaker Mike Bechtle says ordinary encounters can become supernatural appointments
Voices
Good news It's so good to hear some good news for a change ("Profiles in effective compassion," Sept. 2/9). I know a little of what it feels like to be lost when, instead, God intends for...
Joel Belz
Missing the pope's point
Just how shallow is evangelical Christianity these days? One measure may be the virtual silence of any evangelical leader of note concerning the controversial comments of Pope Benedict XVI on Isla...
Andrée Seu Peterson
The quiet hijacking
I started going to church and to A.A. meetings at roughly the same time-to church because I was a new Christian, to Alcoholics Anonymous with a family member. I liked the church services; I loved ...
Marvin Olasky
Bear with me
Publicists who get my e-mail address send me pitches for all kinds of stories, and occasionally a worthwhile story does show up. Last week, though, a couple of pitches for dumb diet books led me t...
Notebook
Sports
Blind-side ball
How did former Giants star Lawrence Taylor revolutionize a position he didn't even play? By ending Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann's career. In the new book The Blind Side: Evolution...
Money
Pulpit politics
When George Regas, rector emeritus of All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., stepped into the pulpit on Oct. 31, 2004, he gave a sermon that the congregation could have mistaken for a lecture on c...
Culture
Movies & TV
Too much of a good thing
Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men surely makes the short list of great American novels. It's a story about how the Old South shed its antique skin and came into modernity, a story abou...
Movies & TV
'Clean' gets scrubbed
In 1998, Sunrise Family Video, a rental outlet based in Utah, offered a version of Titanic with the steamy love scenes edited out. Filmmakers protested, but consumers responded with enthusiasm, le...
Movies & TV
Serious laughs?
While critics love Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC, Mondays, 10:00 ET), television viewers aren't so certain. Starring Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford as television gurus who take over creat...
Movies & TV
Little class
Have the characters in CBS' The Class wrecked their chances for happiness, or can realignment with each other at age 28 set them on a sunnier path? Writers of Friends, Mad About You, and Wi...
Notable Books
Bestselling books
Plot: In this 12th Harry Bosch novel, the veteran detective has the opportunity to close an abduction/murder case from 1993, but something's not quite right: A serial killer who confesses so as to...
Dispatches
The Buzz Sidebar
Read it yourself
On Sept. 24 The New York Times printed a story breathless with insinuation: A classified "National Intelligence Estimate" (NIE) had concluded that the invasion of Iraq turned that country into a t...
Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Green litterbugs Dumping 2 million used tires into the ocean may not seem like a good idea today, but back in the early 1970s it was the ecology plan du jour. In 1972, a Florida ecology gro...
Quotables
Quotables
"If I'm a one-term DA, then I'm a one-term DA." Nassau County, N.Y., District Attorney Kathleen Rice on potential political fallout from her get-tough approach to drunk driving. Rice does n...
The Buzz
The Buzz
Afghanistan Ten years after Taliban forces took over Afghanistan, with reported help from Pakistani intelligence operatives, Afghanistan's democratically elected post-Taliban president, Ham...