What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era.

More even than Southern Presbyterians and Southern Methodists, the Baptists provided the great mass of Confederate enlisted men.

I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

There is no method except yourself.

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

A superb and dreadfully moving account of the glory and subsequent murder by the Romanians of the Jewish city in Odessa. . . . Odessa is both celebration and lament and equally impressive as both.