Reviews

Creating Christ provides a trove of unprecedented insights about the genesis of the modern world’s most popular religion. All interested in Christianity’s provenance would do well to read this boldly original book.

Louis Menand is a writer of great gifts, whose 2000 book The Metaphysical Club is a masterpiece of intellectual history. Unfortunately, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War fails to recapture the magic. That’s partly because despite its bulk—880 pages—it’s curiously incomplete.

WandaVision makes the viewer think while also providing a feast of artistic detail and a gripping mystery story. It’s a rare gem in today’s television landscape.

The sealing of the Magna Carta in 1215 was a major turning point in world history. In the 2017 two-part documentary Secrets of the Magna Carta, writer Martin Durkin sets out to tell the story of this incredible document and its legacy.

Cheerful songs, witty writing, benevolent humor, and contagious optimism make Phineas and Ferb a great work of soul-fueling art, not only for children but for adults as well. Its brilliant optimism and reality-first approach make every episode a delight.

Oedipus the King has been considered a masterpiece for two and a half millennia. No less a luminary than Aristotle called it the ideal tragedy. But today’s readers are often disturbed by its apparent injustice. How is it fair that the gods consign Oedipus—a genuine hero who strives to avoid committing the sins for which he is damned—to such an awful fate?

Margaret Thatcher is one of the most controversial figures in modern history. Some consider her to have been a cruel, heartless villain who destroyed jobs and livelihoods, whereas others revere her as a valiant defender of liberty and the free market who saved her country’s economy.

Root’s book provides a thoroughly researched and readable introduction to the arguments that formed the basis of what has rightly been called the “refounding” of the United States a century and a half ago—and that remain relevant today.

Wonder Woman 1984 is a dark film that reflects writer/director Patty Jenkins’s sense of life and her confusions concerning morality and capitalism.

If you have a youthful soul or are a parent looking for the rare story that shows that heroism is not inborn or altruistic but the result of one’s choices and rational values, Hercules belongs on your watchlist.