1. Teddy Duncan Jr.’s review of Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon (Knopf). “Although the book begins with Pius XII, infamous for his papal silence and even passive collaboration during the Nazi regime, its true nucleus is Vatican II and Pope John XXIII. Vatican II, the seminal ecumenical convening of cardinals and bishops in several meetings over three years in the early-to-mid 1960s, is the activating site of contention for the theological and moral disputes cataloged throughout the book. Church leaders, in Shenon’s multiple mini-biographies, are either aligning themselves with the ‘spirit’ of Vatican II or actively protesting it.”


2. “You Can’t Handle the Truth!” by Mary Collins. “So what did I learn from people like Bill Monroe, former anchor of ‘Meet the Press’ and my editor at the American Journalism Review? (Actually, if the Independent fact-checked that, they’d discover it was called the Washington Journalism Review when I worked there.) Mistakes are distracting and undermine credibility. If you don’t care enough to spell a source’s name correctly, why should I have faith in any part of your story?”


3. “We’ve Got a Brand-New Bag.” “Bestselling biographer Kitty Kelley has long been the backbone of the Independent, and now she’s the face of it, too! We’re thrilled to reveal our new “Read and Write Fearlessly” tote bags, one of which can be yours for a donation of $100! This is about more than carrying your books in a stylish way, though. When you support the nonprofit Independent, you’re signaling your belief that reading matters, that thinking matters, and that the free exchange of ideas — at a time when the world seems increasingly hostile to it — matters.”


4. Carrie Callaghan’s review of Mutual Interest: A Novel by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith (Bloomsbury Publishing). “The author excels at balancing mirth and menace here. Her characters find — or redefine — success while New York’s Gilded Age swirls around them in beautiful color. Her writing sparkles with the glitter and edge of Art Deco beveled mirrors. Still, as the characters twirl and wind around one another as in the best novels of manners, a reader might be left to wonder what, beneath the enameled lacquer, it all means. Is the story about a strange love triangle and the accommodations we can force, if we try hard enough, upon our own circumstances? That seems too narrow. Instead, ‘there are no stakes but the global; there is no timeline but the infinite,’ the book tells us both at the beginning and end. We are aiming beyond a love triangle.”


5. Paul D. Pearlstein’s review of Tangled Fortunes: The Hidden History of Interracial Marriage in the Segregated South by Kathryn Schumaker (Basic Books). “The book analyzes those inconsistent, often confusing legal and societal effects of interracial coupling, or ‘miscegenation.’ The basic questions posed are ones that historians still have no easy answers for: What is marriage (both state-licensed and common law)? Who is a negro (one drop of Black blood, skin color, etc.)? Can the children of an interracial couple be treated as white? What is the status of a paramour of a different race?”

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