In his new book, Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association, outlines the history of secular thought in America, the relatively recent rise of the Religious Right,... Read More

Warren Chisum is a conservative state legislator in Texas. He has long campaigned for the re-criminalization of homosexual acts, and for the elimination of programs designed to help people with AIDS. In 1994 he boasted... Read More

Did you know that in the Roman Catholic Church, there is an official called a camerlengo whose sole duty since the Middle Ages has been to ascertain that a pope is truly dead? One of... Read More

Edward O. Wilson's latest book is structured around three questions: Where did we come from, what are we, and where are we going? Philosophers and theologians have been chewing on these questions for millennia, but... Read More

I have just read—well, more or less—three recent books that will weigh heavily on my mind if I don’t write about them. First, I must explain that I usually read more than one book at... Read More

Awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, Stephen Greenblatt’s new book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern gives us a fascinating, if somewhat disjointed, history of the suppression, unlikely survival, and subsequent effect on... Read More

For conservatives, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael is notorious for her comment of astonishment when Richard Nixon won the 1972 presidential election since, as she remarked, “everyone I know voted for McGovern.” Despite this... Read More