By Emily Bobrow 10/16/06 12:00am

A Pair of Atheists Agree: Time to Let Go of God

Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Alfred A. Knopf, 96 pages, $16.95.

With the publication in 1976 of The Selfish Gene, in which he argued that genes—not individuals—­are the key units of natural selection, Richard Dawkins made his grand entrance into the world of evolutionary biology. A rakish lecturer on zoology at Read More

By Emily Bobrow 11/14/05 12:00am

Graphic Novels on the Verge, A Genre Trapped in a Time Warp

Black Hole, by Charles Burns. Pantheon, 368 pages, $24.95.

Journalists have been heralding the rise of the graphic novel for decades. Ever since Will Eisner published A Contract with God in 1978, the adult comic book has hovered on the scene, always imminent, occasionally praised as a serious art form—as in the case of Art Read More