Henceforth, people will be looking at the universe with the eyes of oxen.    —Katib Chelebi, seventeenth-century geographer “Barack Obama won’t show us his birth certificate,” insists Steve, a Connecticut resident and small business owner, while... Read More

Humanity has a curious relationship with sex. It obviously enjoys it—there are nearly seven billion people in the world and not all that output could be the fruit of duty. Yet, for a practice so... Read More

The new decade was ushered in by a disturbing headline: “Ireland’s New Blasphemy Law Goes into Effect.” New blasphemy law? Don’t those belong in some earlier century? The unfortunate answer is no—blasphemy laws are making... Read More

The publication of Robert Coover’s audacious 1977 novel, The Public Burning, almost never happened. The book uses the circumstances surrounding the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (sentenced to death for allegedly providing the... Read More

Author and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s new novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (Pantheon, 2010), follows the past and present of one Cass Seltzer, a professor of the philosophy... Read More

On April 27, 2007, Kurt Vonnegut was scheduled to speak in Indianapolis as part of the city-proclaimed Year of Vonnegut (he was born and raised in Indianapolis where his family had long-established roots). I was... Read More

A 140-year-old organization in London called the “Catholic Truth Society” has published a new “Prayer Book for Spouses,” containing among other things a prayer to be recited by couples before engaging in sex. The prayer... Read More