In the essays in Conscience and its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism (ISI Books), politics professor Robert P. George expresses his convictions about abortion, same-sex marriage, religious liberty, euthanasia, and assisted suicide. He bases his arguments, he writes, on science and philosophical and moral tradition, not on theological claims.

Publishers Weekly said English professor Jeff Dolven’s first poetry collection, Speculative Music (Sarabande Books), was “on one hand, a bag of tricks and conceits, wherein the speaker — playful, dishonest, and a tad morose — moves his way through the rooms of ordinary life with a bent of vision just-so off normal. On the other, it’s a book of simple, highly accessible verse, even if the turns Dolven takes surprise and jitter.”

Victor Brombert traces the theme of mortality in the works of eight authors in Musings on Mortality: From Tolstoy to Primo Levi (University of Chicago Press). He explores their views on death, the meaning of life, and the human condition. Bromberg is professor emeritus of romance languages and literatures.