america magazine book reviews

110 years of America book reviews

Combing through the book reviews that America has published over 11 decades makes one realize how much the magazine’s literary style has changed (and changed back again) over the years. The reviews are a study in contrasts and ironies. Some decades are full of short, snappy reviews, others of long and meandering reflections. Some years are marked by a particular snark (as seen in some of the selections below), others by perhaps overly generous allowances.

One editor in chief loved literary fiction, and his era shows it; another was a political animal, and there too it is possible to suss out his influence. Theology books were perennial favorites. In the early years of the magazine, the policy of the editors was that women could review books but could be identified by their initials alone. Many years later, the first lay member of America ’s editorial board was Patricia Kossmann, who served as literary editor for 13 years.

Below are some of the more memorable moments among the literally thousands of possibilities—some excerpted from longer reviews, a few the full text.

—James T. Keane, senior editor

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s earlier books, unfortunately, ran into a large number of printings. “The Great Gatsby” will probably meet with like success, despite the fact that it is an inferior novel, considered from any angle whatsoever. It is feeble in theme, in portraiture and even in expression. It purports to picture society, as in New York and Long Island.

—May 30, 1925, unattributed

The Catcher in the Rye

A novel should have substance, should be coherent, should contain vivid characterization; and it is the better for a well-constructed plot. This extended short story has none of these important attributes. In a word, it is not a novel. It is a story which becomes frightfully boring before one is halfway through the book. The story, or what there is of a story, could easily have been told in 5,000 words or less, and told more effectively. The book is peppered with four-letter words. It purports to tell the story of Holden Caulfield, who leaves (by request) a semi-private school and returns to the caverns of New York for a three-day binge. His encounters with the problems of living are told in a flip (and sometimes ferocious) manner which is not in the best of taste. Good writers have given us the smells and tastes of the prize ring without benefit of four-letter words. Mr. Salinger would have written a much more enjoyable book if he had left them where they are usually found—on the walls of latrines where “little boys” write them. Perhaps the best thing to be said about The Catcher in the Rye is that Mr. Salinger would do well to remain in the field of the short story.

—Thomas Francis Ritt, Aug. 11, 1951

To Kill a Mockingbird

It’s not usual for an author to win a Pulitzer Prize with his first novel, but Harper Lee did just that with her To Kill a Mockingbird. It recounts the process of growing up in a small Southern town, as seen through the eyes of the young girl. The atmosphere is wonderfully caught and a nice note of racial justice adds substance, though perhaps it is stated too much as a thesis.

—May 13, 1961, unattributed

The Fire Next Time

I don’t think the criticism is justified. I think it stems from the nervousness of those who, from the best motives in the world, have for too long been announcing the new era in race relations. They are afraid that Baldwin’s insights will frighten off some “men of good will” who now seem to be climbing on the bandwagon in ever increasing numbers. These fears, in my opinion, are misplaced. I find it, instead, a good sign that we can now take the strong medicine which the literary artist administers.

—Thomas H. Clancy, S.J., March 16, 1963

Humor has been pushed beyond the conventional inhibitions of satire and farce, through the shades of “blue” jokes to “black.” This new humor ridicules sex, mocks death, stages orgies in casket rooms, and relates man’s rational mastering of the universe to his irrational tendency toward self-destruction. It specializes in social protest and moral criticism; and in this humor the rapier of sarcasm has been transcended by the laser beams of Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Tony Richardson and—above all—their predecessor, Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22 ….

Catch-22 also seems to have anticipated the denunciations from the Student Left. It supports their charge that our political system consolidates the power of irresponsible military and business interests. It could even be freely interpreted as criticism of our policy in Vietnam. In Catch-22, however, the radical credo, “It’s better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees,” comes from the lips of a naïve boy, and die he does. Rather than a rebel’s textbook, Catch-22 is a pacifist novel in the tradition of All Quiet on the Western Front. Together the books imply that the leaders of any generation are liable to blunder away the youth and love of the next.

—Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., Nov. 6, 1965

In this beautifully wrought novel the plot is fascinating, but the pacing, the language, the characterizations and the descriptions of relationships outweigh the actual events. The story focuses on Sethe and Paul D. who were slaves on a plantation ironically named “Sweet Home.” The irony is complex, since the Sweet Home men—Sethe was the only female slave—were allowed to own guns for hunting, to hire themselves out to earn money, and were never beaten or demeaned.

Contrary to the consensus of American individualism, Morrison suggests that love cannot thrive in the absence of community. This is made clear at the end of the novel. Only when Sethe’s ties to the community are reestablished does her salvation become possible. In Beloved strong community is a precondition, not an impediment to personal fulfillment. For both its beautiful writing and its social insights, this brilliant novel is a joy to read.

—David L. Smith, Feb. 20, 1988

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.

American Writers have something special in their veins. Humor, Comedy, Romance, Tragedy, Evil, can be found on the novels that have written by an American Writer. The charm is amazingly different in their books and the storyline is mixed with different scenarios. Many books are written by cheap essay writers and those books are selling on cheap but we find them equally good with contents. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is all time masterpiece and we all seen its movie starring by Di Caprio. I applause to the writers and their efforts. I am glad that we are still in touch with books. This is a very real quotation to me "A room without books is like a body without a soul".

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The American Book Review is an award-winning, internationally distributed publication specializing in reviews of published works of fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism from small, regional, university, and avant-garde presses. For over forty years, ABR has been a staple of the literary world.

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From the archives, a deep dive into the american book review.

Archives: Charles Johnson reviews Richard Wright

Charles Johnson reviewed Richard Wright's American Hunger in the inaugural issue of the American Book Review , Volume 1 , No. 1, December 1977.

Archives: 100 Best Last Lines from Novels

American Book Review Volume 29, No. 2, published in 2008, featured a list of 100 best last lines from novels.

Archives: 100 Best First Lines from Novels

American Book Review Volume 27, No. 2, published in 2006, featured a list of 100 best opening lines from novels. 

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Written by S. Kalekar October 23rd, 2023

30 Magazines Accepting Book Reviews

These are magazines that accept book reviews. Most also accept other genres, like fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Some of them pay writers. Most, but not all, of them are open for submissions now.

Boston Review They’re currently open for essays and reviews. “Please note that we are a general interest political and literary magazine…. We primarily publish long-form essays, substantial book reviews, and political and social analysis. We do not publish op-eds, and we do not accept unsolicited personal essays.” Poetry and fiction are closed. Details here and here . (They are also looking for paid full-time and part-time Spring editorial interns; the position is in Cambridge, MA; the deadline to apply is 11 th December 2023; see their Submittable for details. They also run the annual Black Voices in the Public Sphere Fellowship for media professionals, which will reopen for applications in early Spring 2024, and which pays a monthly stipend of $5,000.)

Cleveland Review of Books They publish reviews, essays, interviews, and excerpts. “While we are especially committed to publishing writing on, about, and from Cleveland and Ohio, as well as the Rust Belt and greater Midwest, regional connection is by no means a requirement. Our conception of what criticism is and can be is purposefully expansive, generous, and open. We publish writers at all stages of their careers, regardless of publication history.” They have detailed guidelines, please read them carefully. Web rates start at $70. Details here .

Bulb Culture Collective Their social media bio says, “We’re a new online lit space accepting previously published work that has lost its original home.” They publish poetry and prose (reviews, fiction, creative nonfiction, nonfiction, poetry); they want work that was “previously published (regardless of when it was published) by a journal that has since gone dark or if circumstances have made your work unavailable online for any reason. You must retain the rights of this work.” They also accept work that was previously published, regardless of journal status, as long as the work was published in 2021 or before. Details here .

Parabola Parabola is a quarterly journal that explores the quest for meaning as it is expressed in the world’s myths, symbols, and religious traditions, with particular emphasis on the relationship between this store of wisdom and our modern life. They publish book reviews (500 words), as well as articles and translations, retellings of traditional stories, forum contributions, and poetry. The theme for their next issue, Spring 2024, is ‘Freedom’, and the deadline is 1 December 2023. They pay. Details here .

Split Lip Magazine “Split Lip Magazine is a voice-driven literary journal with a pop culture twist.” They publish online monthly and in print annually – reviews (800-1,200 words), micro-reviews of short literary works (micro-reviews are 250-500 words), and interviews (for reviews and interviews, query/submission is via webforms, not Submittable – see guidelines), memoir, flash fiction, short stories, and poetry. Pay is $75 for web contributions, $5/page for print, $50 for interviews/reviews, and $25 for mini-reviews for their web issues. Fee-free submissions for all writers will be from beginning to end November, or until filled. “In an effort to promote Black voices, free submissions will be open for Black writers and artists in all genres all year (except when we are closed to all submissions in July and the second half of December).” Details here , here (query/submission form for reviews), and here (query/submission form for micro-reviews).

433 Their website says, “433 is a daily magazine of art, literature and politics that began as a running collection of “moments of silence” from various places around the world, experienced in isolation, in the midst of a pandemic.” They publish nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art. And, “Notes is our new channel for reviews, interviews and criticism. We will consider any book, film, music, art or other reviews/criticism/interviews, but we will place a special emphasis and are particularly interested in writing that emerges from within the author’s communities. … Criticism here is seen as distinct from creative nonfiction, but we know this is a strange distinction, and if you submit as criticism or CNF, we won’t mind if it feels more like one or the other.” Details here .

Woods Reader This is a publication for those who love woodland areas – public preserves, forests, tree farms, etc. They want work pertaining to locations within the US and Canada. Writers should query before submitting book reviews. They also publish personal experience, philosophy, personal opinion, fiction, educational articles, humor, poetry, destination pieces, assigned topics, as well as photographs and illustrations. They ideally want work of 500-1,000 words and occasionally accept longer. Pay is $25 to $100. Details here .

Black Fox Literary Magazine This is a print and online magazine. For their blog posts, they want articles on the craft of writing, personal essays on writing, book reviews, book news, and publishing news. They also accept fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art. There is no fee for submitting blog posts, and those are open on an ongoing basis; the deadline for fee-free submissions in other genres is 30 November 2023. Details here and here .

Poetry Apart from poems, they also publish reviews of poetry books of 1,200-1,800 words and other poetry-related prose. They want reviews that consider 2 or more new poetry collections, drawing connections between disparate works, focusing on a shared theme/aesthetic/etc. across works by different poets; reviews focused on multiple books by a single author and/or on collected or new and selected works; and reviews of underappreciated/overlooked works from the last year. Pay is $150/page for prose, and $10 per line for poetry ($300 minimum). Details here . (They also run the annual $10,000 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism for full-length published prose work, the deadline for which has passed this year.)

COMP: an interdisciplinary journal This magazine is affiliated with Piedmont University, and they have published 3 issues so far. “For critical prose, we’d love to feature craft essays, artist manifestos, criticism, reviews, essays on film, music, visual art, poetics or writing praxis/pedagogy, etc.” They also publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and cross-genre work. Their submission period is November to February. Please send your work only during the reading period. Details here .

Strange Horizons This science fiction and fantasy magazine publishes in-depth reviews of speculative art and entertainment, especially books, films, and television. They prefer reviews of 1,500-2,000 words, and pay $60 for reviews of at least 1,000 words. They also accept review pitches. Apart from reviews, they publish speculative fiction, nonfiction, poetry, columns and roundtables, for which rates vary. Details here and here .

The Amazine Their guidelines say, “we invite you to send us your submissions, in form of think pieces, social and cultural commentaries, all kinds of reviews and recommendations, portraits, prose, poetry, essays, travelogues and almost anything else. If you don’t express yourself with words, no worries, send us your collages, drawings, photos, videos …” Their mission is “Creating a space for joy, curiosity and the bittersweetness of life by keeping wonder alive and kicking.” Details here .

Lincoln Review This annual magazine is affiliated with the University of Lincoln. They accept queries for book reviews and interviews, and submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and comics. Details here .

Tor.com This science fiction and fantasy publisher accepts pitches for essays, think pieces, list posts, reaction pieces, and reviews in the 1,000-2,000 word range for their blog. All original content for blogs is paid. They have occasional calls for novels and novellas on their website. Details here .

West Branch This literary magazine from Bucknell University publishes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. For reviews, “Book reviews are typically arranged by assignment, and we currently publish only poetry reviews. If you are interested in writing reviews, please query with a sample. Our pay rate for reviews is highly competitive.” Pay for other prose is up to $200 and for poetry, it is $100. Details here .

London Review of Books This well-regarded magazine accepts unsolicited submissions as well as proposals. “The best guide to what we might like is what we usually publish, including poems, reviews, reportage, memoir, articles for our Short Cuts and Diary slots, and blogposts.” Details here .

Kaleidoscope They publish work on disability, and accept work from writers with and without disabilities. For reviews their guidelines say, “Reviews that are substantive, timely, powerful works about publications in the field of disability and/or the arts. The writer’s opinion of the work being reviewed should be clear. The review should be literary work in its own right – 5,000 words maximum each/two reviews maximum.” They also publish poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, articles, and visual art. Pay is $10-100. Details here .

Agbowo They publish work by African origin writers only. They accept reviews of up to 1,500 words; reviews of recently published books are given preference. They also accept fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, and art/photography. Interviews are closed for now. Pay ranges from $25 to $60. There is also an editor’s prize for poetry, $100. Please send only one submission per reading period. The deadline is 30 October 2023. Details here .

The Masters Review They accept book reviews for their blog, though these are unpaid – “Book Reviews (700-1,200 words) must be of books scheduled for a 2023 release. We recommend submitting your review at least one month before the scheduled publication date.” They also accept fee-free submissions of interviews and craft essays for the blog, fiction for their ‘New Voices’ series, as well as a fast response option for BIPOC voices. They pay for these. Details here .

Carousel This is a “hybrid literary/arts magazine with a global focus, positioning Canadian talent alongside international contributors.” They are open for #USEReview, their experimental reviews section. “We are especially looking for reviews of hybrid literature, graphic novels or experimental poetry and prose. … There is no set genre for your review. Send us a suite of poems, a comic strip, a short story, a piece of visual art — whatever you like, as long as you feel that your review meaningfully comments upon the text(s) in question. … The text being reviewed does not need to be contemporary, though we will likely prioritize reviews of more recent texts.” Pay is $20-40 for these reviews. They are currently closed to fiction and poetry. Details here .

The Chamber Magazine They publish dark fiction, poetry, essays, translations, as well as book and movie reviews. For reviews, “The more recently published or distributed the better, but I will consider reviews of classic works of dark fiction all the way back to Walpole (and before if sufficiently interesting). These must be approximately 7,500 words or less also.” Details here .

The Horn Book Magazine They review children’s and YA books published in the US. “Articles submitted to The Horn Book Magazine should be of a critical nature on some aspect of children’s literature and should be no longer than 1600 words in length. Potential contributors are advised to have a solid familiarity with The Horn Book Magazine before submitting manuscripts. “Cadenza” submissions — witty commentaries, send-ups, poems, sketches, comics, cartoons, etc. — should be approximately 350 words (text) or fit on a 6-by-9-inch page (art).” They do not accept fiction, or work by children. They pay. Details here .

Contingent Magazine Contingent is a non-profit history magazine. “Our writers are adjuncts, museum workers, independent scholars—all people who work outside the tenure-track professoriate.” They accept pitches of reviews , “of books (especially books by non-tenure-track historians), films, museum exhibits, television shows, really anything reviewable. If there’s a book coming out soon you’d like to review, we can arrange to have an advance reader copy sent to you.” Reviews are roughly 1,000-1,500 words, and the base pay for these is $250. They have other columns and features too, and pay ranges from $50 to $500. Details are in their pitch guide here .

The Ex-Puritan This magazine publishes reviews of Canadian literature, as well as interviews, nonfiction, fiction, experimental/hybrid work, and poetry from writers around the world. “We publish reviews of CanLit books, especially by marginalized & debut authors. We love reviews of chapbooks; we love reviews both experimental and traditional. We are especially interested in work by LGBTQ2S+ writers, BIPOC writers, and writing from other marginalized folks. Reviews doesn’t require a full draft; a pitch is acceptable as long as it is fully thought out and justified.” Pay is CAD100 per interview or review; CAD200 per essay; CAD150 for fiction; CAD35 per poem (or page, capped at CAD120); CAD50+ per experimental or hybrid work, at an increasing scale depending on the nature of the piece. They read year-round, with cut-off dates for issues. The deadline for their upcoming issue is 25 December 2023; they accept a limited number of fee-free submissions each month (see guidelines). Details here and here .

Archetype They publish reviews (1,000-5,000 words), essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, impassioned musings, photography, and art. See their section on writing reviews. Also see their writer’s resources , which details the kind of work they are looking for; it also has a section on writing reviews . They have two reading periods, November 1 to January 7 for their spring issue, and from June 1 to August 6 for the fall issue. Please send your work only during the reading periods. Payment is a contributor copy. Details here .

The Columbia Review This magazine is affiliated with Columbia University. For reviews, they accept outlines/pitches of up to 600 words, as well as complete reviews of up to 1,500 words. They also publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translations. The deadline is 15 th December 2023. Details here .

Gramarye Their website says, “The Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction seeks articles, book reviews and creative writing relating to literary and historical approaches to fairy tales, fantasy, Gothic, magic realism, science fiction and speculative fiction for Gramarye, its peer-reviewed journal published by the University of Chichester.” Reviews are approximately 1,000 words. The deadline is 21 March 2024. Details here .

MetaStellar Magazine Their guidelines say, “We are interested in reviews covering any form of entertainment — books, movies, TV Shows, videogames, and so on — as long as it falls into the science fiction, fantasy or horror genres. We prefer a word count between 500 and 800 words, but also accept longer pieces if you are writing a listicle, such as “Ten Best Fantasy Novels Involving Dogs.”” Reviews, essays, excerpts, and reprints are unpaid and accepted year-round. They pay for flash fiction , which is open till end-October. Details here and here .

Slightly Foxed Their website says, “Our contributors are established writers, journalists and people from other fields who share their passion for particular books and authors. Since it is entirely independent, Slightly Foxed is free to follow its own bent, to promote unfashionable enthusiasms, to celebrate the offbeat and the unusual. Contributors are encouraged to discuss their chosen books with passion and wit, to air arcane knowledge, to delight in eccentricity and to share the joys of exploring the extraordinary, the little-known and the downright peculiar.”  Writers should check their index first to make sure they have not already covered their chosen book. Articles are 1,000-2,000 words. Past contributors include Robert Macfarlane and P. D. James. They also say anything accepted for publication is unlikely to appear immediately. They pay. Details here and here .

Harbor Review They want reviews of poetry chapbooks, full length books of poetry, poetry and art hybrid books, and art books. “Written reviews should be around 300 words. The book being reviewed should be forthcoming or have been published in the last 6 months. We are particularly interested in reviews of work by women, non-binary folks, people of color, and members of the LGBT community. Send us something different. Make a video. Write something unusual. Incorporate an interview. Interpretive dance? Yes!” They also publish poetry and art. Details here (scroll down). (They are also open for fee-free submissions from BIPOC writers and previous finalists for their Laureate Prize for poetry manuscripts ; the prize is $500 and publication, and the deadline is 31 st January 2023, details here .)

Bio:  S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached  here .

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September 20, 2024

Free Talk: Writing the Essential Scenes of Act II

  Download the Slides Ley Taylor Johnson is a writing consultant, author, and regular contributor to Authors Publish Magazine. Ley is also a member of the Northwest Editors Guild and the Editorial Freelancers Association. For those interested in working with Lee, I encourage you to visit their website.

Available to watch right now, completely free.

September 6, 2024

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31 Themed Submission Calls and Contests for November 2024

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Eleven Wonderful Canadian Literary Journals

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Gather 'round — we have some fall reading recommendations for you. Above, children listen to a story in Central Park on Oct. 23, 2017. Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Here are the new books we're looking forward to this fall

September 4, 2024 • Bad news: Summer's over. Good news: Fall books are here! We've got a list of 16 titles — fiction and nonfiction — you'll want to look out for.

Jeff VanderMeer painted a grotesque picture of climate change. Now he’s back for more

November 3, 2024 • Since publishing Annihilation and the subsequent Southern Reach novels, VanderMeer has become a poster child for fiction confronting climate change. Now he’s back with a highly anticipated prequel.

Absolution and the problem with cli-fi

Brothers Alex (top) and Eddie Van Halen in an undated photo. HarperCollins hide caption

Undone by the loss of his brother Eddie, Alex Van Halen looks back in a new memoir

October 29, 2024 • Though Alex had been the guitarist in the family, when they formed Van Halen, it quickly became clear who would play: "[Ed] made that instrument sing." Alex's new memoir is Brothers .

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Demar derozan.

October 29, 2024 • DeMar DeRozan is a basketball player for the Sacramento Kings. He's a six time NBA All-Star and an Olympic gold medalist. DeRozan just released a memoir: Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm . He joins us to talk about some tough subjects covered in the book like his struggle with depression. He also gets into what it was like to be named dropped in one of the hottest songs of summer – Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar.

Eliza Griswold writes for The New Yorker and teaches at Princeton University. Her book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America  was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. Seamus Murphy/Macmillan hide caption

How culture wars divided one small progressive church in Philadelphia

October 28, 2024 • Journalist Eliza Griswold says complaints about homophobia, white privilege and diversity are splintering progressive organizations — including one particular church. Her book is Circle of Hope.

Picture This

Granny is going on 'the walk' to the polls — and the whole town is invited.

October 26, 2024 • "Leaders are not born," Granny says. "They're made through molding and modeling." That's why she and her granddaughter and putting on their hats and coats and walking to the polls.

PICTURE THIS: THE WALK

"I'm not haunted by him, even in the most benign sense," Nick Harkaway says of his father, John le Carré. "I grieve occasionally. That doesn't go away. It just gets manageable." Nadav Kander/Penguin Random House hide caption

After John le Carré's death, his son had the 'daunting' task to revive George Smiley

October 23, 2024 • Nick Harkaway grew up hearing his dad read drafts of his George Smiley novels. He picks up le Carré's beloved spymaster character in the new novel, Karla's Choice.

Journalist Rebecca Nagle poses next to her new book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land Photo credit: Brittany Bendabout hide caption

Code Switch

Spitting on andrew jackson's grave with rebecca nagle.

October 23, 2024 • That's how Nagle begins her new book and how she frames the version of history she's telling. The book digs into the past and future of Native sovereignty through the lens of one of the most significant Supreme Court rulings for Native Americans in over 100 years.

The Navalny Family during rehab courtesy of Navalny Family Archive hide caption

Consider This from NPR

Even in death, alexei navalny hasn't given up the fight against corruption in russia.

October 22, 2024 • In his posthumous memoir, Patriot , Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote - "If they do finally whack me, the book will be my memorial."

What if a 'Blood Test' predicted you'd commit murder?

October 22, 2024 • In Charles Baxter's new novel, a small-town insurance salesman buys a blood test that can predict romantic entanglements, promotions — and more. It's a screwball satire of all-American zaniness.

A housemaid is suspected of killing a child in 'Clean,' a novel about class and power

October 17, 2024 • Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán has written an intense novel about the kind of deep down rot that lingers, despite the most vigorous scrubbing.

Michel Houellebecq says Annihilation will be his last novel. Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A polarizing, provocative French novelist says he’s written his last book

October 16, 2024 • Michel Houellebecq is a controversial literary superstar. His new book, Annihilation, centers on a middle-aged Paris bureaucrat in a sexless marriage. It's slow to start, but still holds surprises.

Horror author Stephen King has been scaring audiences for generations. Eric Feferberg/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Pop Culture Happy Hour

The scary movies and books that still haunt us.

October 16, 2024 • A lot of us are about to have the experience of opening our front doors to find witches, goblins, ghosts, and Moo Deng standing on our porches. Why? Because it's almost Halloween. In this encore episode, we talk about what kinds of entertainment scared us when we were kids, and whether they still scare us now.

Bob Woodward at the 2021 Audi Innovation Series at The Ritz Carlton on November 10, 2021 in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Audi Canada hide caption

Bob Woodward's newest book is making headlines

October 15, 2024 • Legendary journalist Bob Woodward's new book Wa r, like so many of his books about the American presidency over the last half century, is generating headlines.

Mosab Abu Toha and his wife and children are currently living in Syracuse, N.Y., where he is a fellow at the University of Syracuse. Penguin Random House hide caption

Middle East

'my losses started the day i was born': a poet on what it’s like to call gaza home.

October 15, 2024 • Mosab Abu Toha was able to escape Gaza, along with his wife and three young children. The award-winning poet talks about parenting in war and the devastation of leaving his family and friends behind.

Mosab Abu Toha

Elvis Presley poses with wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie, in a room at Baptist hospital in Memphis, Tenn., on Feb. 5, 1968. AP/AP hide caption

Elvis’ granddaughter says it was her ‘duty’ to finish Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir

October 14, 2024 • Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley, was working on a memoir when she died in 2023. Now, her daughter Riley Keough, has finished and published From Here to the Great Unknown.

Riley Keough helps mom Lisa Marie Presley emerge from Elvis' shadow in a new memoir

Shred Sisters Grove Atlantic hide caption

Modest moments become revelatory in the wry and incisive 'Shred Sisters'

October 14, 2024 • Betsy Lerner's debut novel weaves together the ordinary and the erratic to tell the story of a middle-class Jewish family whose suburban life is turned upside down by mental illness.

The cover of Song of Myself: A Novel by Arnie Kantrowitz Tatiana Fernandez/Sentinel Voices hide caption

Walt Whitman, gay love and a posthumous novel

October 13, 2024 • Gay rights pioneer Arnie Kantrowitz shelved dreams of publishing his novel. Three years after his death, his partner fulfils his wish.

A little mouse sets sail on a big adventure in 'The Ship in the Window'

October 13, 2024 • Author Travis Jonker and illustrator Matthew Cordell talk about the real model ship that inspired their picture book about a man, his son, a mouse, and the voyage that brings them together.

PICTURE THIS: The Ship In The Window

South Korean author Han Kang in Seoul, South Korea, in 2016. Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Lee Jin-man/AP hide caption

Book News & Features

Han kang becomes the first south korean writer to win the nobel prize in literature.

October 10, 2024 • The citation commended Han Kang's "intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life." She won the International Booker Prize for The Vegetarian in 2016.

Some people with anxiety find horror movies helpful. The films can focus their minds in a controlled environment that they can overcome. Crazytang/Getty Images hide caption

Why some people love scary movies

October 9, 2024 • In human history, fear kept us safe when running from predators and anxiety kept us from going back to that lion-infested area. But what happens when these feelings get out of hand in humans today? And why do some of us crave that feeling from scary movies or haunted houses? For answers, we turn to Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist from Wayne State University. He likes studying fear so much, he wrote a whole book called Afraid . This episode, he gets into the difference between fear and anxiety, many of the reasons people feel afraid and why things like scary movies could even be therapeutic.

Barry Sonnenfeld

October 8, 2024 • What do the films Men in Black , The Addams Family and Raising Arizona all have in common? They were all shot by cinematographer and director Barry Sonnenfeld. He's responsible for filming and directing some of the biggest movies from the 20th century. He joins us to talk about his new memoir and reflect on his many years in show business.

Listen to this Episode

Margaret Atwood says she doesn't feel envy toward others but has experienced people being envious of her. Mike Coppola/Getty Images hide caption

Margaret Atwood was advised to just find a good man. Her response: 'You're an idiot'

October 6, 2024 • Margaret Atwood knows that she scares people. She opens up about that perception and also reflects on the bad advice she's received in her career and how she takes vengeance.

Margeret Atwood isn't surprised people find her scary

Elvis tribute artists on stage in Porthcawl in Wales. Robbie Griffiths/NPR hide caption

A small town in Wales claims the world's biggest Elvis festival. NPR visited

October 3, 2024 • You might expect the world’s biggest Elvis Presley festival to be in Las Vegas, or Memphis, Tenn. One small UK seaside town holds an annual -- and possibly the world's biggest -- Elvis Presley festival.

Visiting the world's biggest Elvis festival in — unexpectedly — a small town in Wales

Book Review

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America’s White Evangelical Problem

When the journalist Tim Alberta’s father unexpectedly died, another ordeal awaited Tim. His father had pastored the Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian church in Michigan, where the Alberta family now gathered to honor his life alongside the congregation the father had nurtured. “None of us had slept much that week,” Alberta writes in his second book, The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism . “So the first time someone made a glancing reference to Rush Limbaugh, it did not compute.” But the references kept coming. Soon, Alberta realized they were talking about him. He was promoting his first book, American Carnage , on the ascension of Donald Trump , and Limbaugh was displeased about what Alberta calls “unflattering revelations” about the former president. Now, members of his father’s congregation wanted to know if Alberta remained a Christian, whether he was “still” on “the right side.”

In his eulogy the next day, Alberta urged the Christians before him to seek out “discipleship and spiritual formation.” They could listen to his father’s old sermons, perhaps, or the pastors of the church could help them. “Why are you listening to Rush Limbaugh ?” he asked them. “Garbage in, garbage out.” Hours later, a woman handed him a note from a church elder. In it, the elder expressed his disappointment. “I was part of an evil plot,” Alberta recalls, “to undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States.” He was guilty of something “tantamount to treason” against both God and country. If he investigated “the deep state” instead, he “would be restored.”

How did his father’s congregation get to this point? In Alberta’s new book, he tries to answer that very question. His journey spans the United States, taking him from Cornerstone to the sprawling campus of Liberty University with various stops at other churches, where the false virtues of ivermectin are preached from the pulpit and the pseudo-historian David Barton tells eager audiences that America is the Christian nation they imagine it to be. After one Barton event, an Ohio pastor tells him that pastors must preach politics. “What I could offer was a window into my faith tradition,” Alberta writes in the prologue. “It happens to be the tradition that is the most polarizing and the least understood; the tradition that is more politically relevant and domestically disruptive than all the others combined: Evangelicalism.”

American Evangelicalism is polarizing, certainly, but anyone who thinks it’s poorly understood is not paying attention. Evangelicals — usually white, conservative Evangelicals — are the subject of countless books and sweeping articles. We know at this point how the contemporary Christian right came to be; we know, too, the danger it poses. American Evangelicals form the core of Trump’s base. They generate such reliable interest because they wield power. Joe Biden is the president, but in a real way, America is still under the Evangelical boot. Roe v. Wade is gone thanks in part to Evangelical voters who helped win control of the U.S. Supreme Court, and further threats to abortion rights loom on the horizon. Conservative activists are stoking an anti-LGBTQ+ backlash in school districts across the country. Liberals rightly fear that this religious minority may help Trump get back into office.

There’s an appetite, then, for a whisperer, someone who can lay out the threat and offer up a solution. What distinguishes The Kingdom from other entries in the genre is Alberta’s dual role as a person of faith and a political journalist. He is a product of the church who became a critic from within. That’s fraught territory, and there’s much to explore. Alberta realizes that, in its current form, Evangelicalism poses a threat to the country, but he is consumed equally by the threat it poses to itself. From this angle, a political crisis can look like a spiritual one. To some people of faith, perhaps it’s both, but its earthly ramifications can’t be ignored. A less Trumpy but still conservative Evangelicalism would remain authoritarian and a threat to us all.

Like Alberta, I grew up in the church, but unlike him, I left it over a decade ago, repulsed by its rightward tilt. People I love and respect still belong to Evangelical churches, including my parents, who are not Trump voters but are staunchly anti-abortion. So while they’ve soured on their tradition’s relationship to the Republican Party, they still are not liberal by any definition. They resemble Chris Winans, who succeeded Alberta’s father as pastor. Anti-abortion but concerned by his congregation’s apparent jingoism, Winans experienced a personal crisis as church members fled, dissatisfied with his nonpartisan approach. “Then I started to wonder if Dad didn’t have some level of culpability in all of this,” Alberta writes — a brave statement to make about a parent he clearly adores. Later, Winans diagnoses his shrinking flock: “Too many of them worship America.”

Alberta’s confrontation with his father’s congregation had been years, even decades, in the making. “The notion of America declining as a nation due to diminished religiosity was nothing new: Church leaders had spent a half century warning that to ban prayer in public schools and to legalize abortion and to normalize drugs and pornography and unwedded sex was to invite God’s wrath, or at the very least, His indifference,” he writes. Though he doesn’t say so, these warnings were really about losing power. Diminished religiosity, as he puts it, could spell the defeat of the church, and if the church lost power, society was doomed. The alliance between Evangelicalism and the GOP was a true marriage of minds, which helps explain its durability. In such an environment, few can say they did not bear some culpability in the politicization of the church.

Alberta’s father might have been directly complicit. He had shown his church a video warning them that Obamacare was dangerous, voted for Trump largely because of abortion, and considered attacks on Trump to be an attack on his own character. Above all, “Dad’s kryptonite as a Christian — and I think he knew it, though he never admitted it to me — was his intense love of country.” Alberta’s father even banned Democratic politicians from a marine’s funeral in 2007. Alberta recalls the sermon: “‘I am ashamed, personally, of leaders who say they support the troops but not the commander-in-chief,’ Dad thundered from his pulpit at Cornerstone, earning a raucous standing ovation. ‘Do they not see that discourages the warriors and encourages the terrorists?’”

Nationalism always had a grip on the white Evangelical church. When I attended a conservative Evangelical college, I realized just how deeply those hatreds ran. Barack Obama’s election disturbed my classmates, maybe even frightened them. Here was a Black liberal with a suspicious name, and here was the loss of power they abhorred. In The Kingdom , Alberta reflects on the Obama years after speaking with Robert Jeffress, a megachurch pastor and prominent Trump supporter. White Evangelicals “had spent Obama’s presidency marinating in a message of end-times agitation. Something they loved was soon to be lost. Time was running out to reclaim it. The old rules no longer applied. Desperate times called for desperate — even disgraceful — measures,” he writes. Jeffress, he adds, “was inviting an obvious question: Once a person becomes convinced that they are under siege — that enemies are coming for them and want to destroy their way of life — what is to stop that person from becoming radicalized?”

You will know them by their fruits, the Bible says. Behold: conspiracy theories, prejudice, and fear; eventually, Donald Trump.

To his credit, for all the time Alberta spends with the radical Evangelical right, he is not desensitized to what he uncovers. Instead, he is scandalized. “Would a serious Christian see fit, I wondered, to condone this brutish behavior in any other area of life?” he writes of the Road to Majority conference where Trump had spoken to an enthralled audience. “Would they condone vicious ad hominem attacks if they were launched at the office? Would they condone the use of vulgarities and violent innuendo inside their home? Would they condone blatant abuses of power at their local school or nonprofit or church?” A “serious Christian” might not, as Alberta defines the term. He goes on to ask why these Christians accept a certain brutality in politics that they may not accept in other areas of their lives. “This compartmentalization of standards is toxic to the credibility of the Christian witness,” he writes.

That may be true. But from the outside, the very distinction looks like a mirage. People who consider themselves serious Christians have welcomed vulgar right-wing media into their homes for decades. They have listened to people like Jerry Falwell and Limbaugh launch “vicious ad hominem attacks” on their enemies, and they applauded every time. The abuse of power is acceptable to some Christians, who have driven out pastors and faithful professors and who have captured school boards and state legislatures and more, seeking power in the name of Christ. They can cite chapter and verse too. They believe they are serious.

Elsewhere, Alberta lends a surprising credence to political Evangelicalism. “There were reasonable concerns, following the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, that churches and religious nonprofits might be punished for acting in accordance with their traditional beliefs,” he says without offering any evidence for the claim. He goes on to quote Russell Moore, a high-profile Evangelical Trump critic who left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021: “There are genuine threats to religious expression in America, Moore said, but a government crackdown on churches wasn’t among them.” What are these threats? We never find out.

Alberta invests his hopes for the church in a small remnant of Evangelicals who are dismayed by what their faith has become. They nevertheless appear conservative on issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. This sets up a greater problem, one that never really gets resolved in the book. On the subject of abortion, conservative Evangelicals are extremists, out of step both with medical science and public opinion. Even the remnant is complicit; if you think abortion is state-sanctioned murder, you cannot be apolitical. It’s a bit rich, then, to accuse your more partisan brothers and sisters of wrecking the faith: “Winning is a virtue. I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.” So do you, if you’re anti-abortion.

I still empathize with my parents and other Evangelicals who may be mourning the loss of an institutional Christian witness. That pain is real. Could it also save the church? I don’t know, but I don’t think so; the headwinds are too great. It may be the wrong question anyway. Perhaps ask, instead, whether there is anything worth salvaging about Evangelicalism. Toward the end of the book, Alberta returns to his father’s church, where Winans has discipled a smaller but steadier congregation. Alberta gives the last word to him — really to Christ, speaking through Winans. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal,” Winans says, quoting Second Corinthians 4:18. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, after all.

Remembering this could do the Evangelical church some real good. Alberta’s underlying idea, though, seems to be that the proper spirituality, in the form of serious discipleship or a return to the fundamentals of the faith, can help resolve the political crisis of the church. This sidesteps the authoritarianism that lives within Evangelicalism and fails to resolve the problem of the remnant, which clings to reactionary beliefs while it decries the debasement of the faith by politics. The remnant and the Trump brigade don’t belong to different categories. They exist on the same continuum, and it’s a short one at that.

American Evangelicals once struck their alliance with the right because they longed for power and feared the loss of it. Such a fate was to be avoided, no matter the cost. Now, it’s clear the costs are high indeed — for white Evangelicals and for the rest of us, too. We may benefit, temporarily, from a saner Evangelicalism, a tradition gripped less by Trump and more by spiritual concerns. But the most vulnerable citizens of this country will never be safe as long as millions believe there should be no right to abortion and no equality for LGBTQ+ people. Fail to acknowledge that and we’ll stay under the Evangelical boot for good.

• bully pulpit
• donald trump
• republican party
• white evangelicals

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