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Christian reactions to Osama bin Laden’s death.

His warped worldview still persists.

Religion, birtherism, mission accomplished, and the fear of a black president.

How do people react to death of an enemy?

Finding closure beyond revenge.

Sharron Angle’s political future.

When he’s not writing bestselling books, Vincent Bugliosi is a legendary prosecuting attorney. As such, he is certainly well acquainted with the legal policy of presumption of innocence. His newest book, Divinity of Doubt, a treatise on agnosticism, would have been much better if Bugliosi had taken this principle into account in the context of his arguments for, and against, God.

Borrowing generously from old school humanists like Rousseau, and deploying scientific data, Brooks’ new book argues for a more heartfelt humanism. Aren’t there more interesting lessons on human life that we might cull from scientific research?

There’s a 40-year interval between Stephen Levine’s previous book of poetry and his latest—that’s quite a span. Though his books of prose have found over a million readers, this newest book flies under the radar. Why? One is the still-marginal place of poetry in American culture. For book publishers, the “poetry marketplace” (a kind of oxymoron, since poetry operates largely outside the cash nexus), is largely fueled by writing programs in academia. True, Coleman Barks’ renditions of medieval Sufi poet Rumi captivated a national audience, for a spell. But America’s own living, devotional, mystic poets find a much smaller audience, and slip through the cracks of critical discourse.

Twilight wars in the Middle East, Japan’s nuclear catastrophe, Deepwater Horizon, worldwide crop failures, massive die-offs of long-established species: it’s all so very scary.