Books

Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” depicts the world of over a hundred years ago, a world long gone.  Told within the context of New York Society, circa 1870s, Oppression and Competition are the twin symptoms of the malaise of the times.  Oppression rears its head in the form of pervasive social niceties–people are so nice and polite, but it’s all a sham. While people behave conventionally, their false fronts and facades conceal their true feelings that roil beneath the surface in a toxic stew of despair. Despite all of the fashionable frippery...

Mantel conjures the world under the reign of Henry VIII and delivers Thomas Cromwell, in all of his complexity, to us as a sort of gift that keeps giving. If we can understand Cromwell, then maybe we can learn to understand ourselves.