Books, Arts & Manners

Lou de Laâge and Isabelle Huppert in White as Snow. (Gaumont/Cohen Media Group) Anne Fontaine’s White as Snow challenges the ‘non-binary’ concept of sex. Anne Fontaine’s White as Snow (Blanche comme neige) is a surprisingly…

(Alexey_M/Getty Images) People are not mere tools. Not for entertainment, and not for propaganda. Human affairs have long been marked by chaos and violence. The reign of King Richard II (1377–1399) is instructive not because it was…

Detail of portrait of Sarah Josepha Hale by James Reid Lambdin, c. 1831. (Public domain/Wikimedia) Writer and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale succeeded in 19th-century America, against the odds, as Melanie Kirkpatrick lays out in…

G.K. Chesterton (Bain News Service/Library of Congress) A hundred years ago, one Englishmen came to our shores and liked what he saw — unlike many of his peers. Today, it’s worth understanding why. The prolific, charismatic English…

The Mysterious Benedict Society (Disney+) Disney’s version of a beloved series of books is shallow and disappointing. ‘You possess a quality which is severely lacking in our society,” Mr. Benedict said to the four children. From our…

Larry McMurtry at the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, Calif., in 2006. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) Plainspoken and unpretentious, McMurtry was one of our greatest novelists because he understood the importance of storytelling to human…

Judas and the Black Messiah star Daniel Kaluuya arrives at the 2018 Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, Calif., March 3, 2018. (Danny Moloshok/Reuters) Myth-making aside, Judas and the Black Messiah is a sharply etched…