Book Review

One of the most stunning revelations of “In the Heart of the Sea” by Nathaniel Philbrick was the witness reports of the sperm whale’s attack on the Essex, which is assumed to have inspired the book Moby Dick.

Till We Have Built Jerusalem is a challenging book for daring to discuss the connection between ethics and aesthetic theories of architecture and urban design, what Bess calls our “built environment.”

Eric Tistounet’s book The UN Human Rights Council: A Practical Anatomy adds to our understanding of United Nations bodies and how human rights are addressed within this multilateral institution.

Michael Sandel’s “The Tyranny of Merit” is an invitation to rethink a seemingly self-evident thought, that our social and economic position should be dictated solely by whether we deserve to have that position.

While most histories of the Civil War naturally focus on the drama in America, Don H. Doyle’s “The Cause of All Nations” explains how the conflict fits into broader world history and how events abroad affected the war.

In “Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War,” Samuel Moyn forces readers to ask whether America’s shift toward “humane” war has a dark side.

Melissa Florer-Bixler is angry, and she wants her fellow Mennonites to get angry, too. At least, that is the professed premise of her book, “How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace.”

John Wilsey’s new book “God’s Cold Warrior” is the only full-life biography of John Foster Dulles that thoroughly investigates his religious life and the ways his faith influenced his professional and personal lives.

George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk argue in “One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America” that the gulf between progressive and conservative Christianity is so great they are no longer the same faith.