Here’s a not-so-fun fact. Did you know that, in the 21st century, all but one of the American presidents have been teetotalers?The first, George W. Bush, is a recovering alcoholic. (That’s the languag ...

The peculiarity of this week’s inauguration ceremony has already been widely observed. Peculiar that this rite, hailed by the media as the great culmination of the long fight to unseat a dictatorial t ...

In Look to Windward, a science fiction novel from the late Scottish author Iain M. Banks, perfectly clear video and audio can be instantaneously transmitted across vast interstellar distances, yet peo ...

The Silence,Don DeLillo, Scribner, 128 pagesThere is a certain sort of author, who, once he has produced something great, churns out only inferior work, and often so much of it that even fans doubt wh ...

What books make up the American canon in the year 2021? What texts do we hold in common? These are more difficult questions to answer than they ought to be. Once the Bible would have been at the top o ...

I see a lot of arms and men who believe themselves in exile. Though, unlike the hero Aeneas who must traverse “far and pathless” ways to find a new home in distant Italy after the destruction of his n ...