Although it is rarely taught in political-science courses, the Hebrew Bible has had a profound impact on Western political thought, from medieval Christian Europe to the American founders and to the present. Yoram Hazony, who has written extensively on this subject, here discusses the Bible’s political doctrines, arguing that Genesis and Exodus contrast the pastoral and nomadic life of the patriarchs with the sophisticated and all-powerful governments found in the empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Furthermore, he finds in Judges and Samuel a doctrine of the monarchy, the social contract, and the consent of the governed utterly unlike the notion of “divine right” claimed by many premodern rulers. (Interview by Jonathan Silver. Audio, 39 minutes. Options for download and streaming are available at the link below.)

Reviewing Stranger Than Fiction, a new history of the 20th-century novel, Joseph Epstein draws attention to what’s missing:

A novelist and short-story writer who gets no mention whatsoever in Stranger Than Fiction is Isaac Bashevis Singer. When from time to time I am asked who among the writers of the past half century is likely to be read 50 years from now, Singer’s is the first name that comes to mind. His novels and stories can be sexy, but sex, unlike in many of the novels of Norman Mailer, William Styron, or Philip Roth, is never chiefly about sex. His stories are about that much larger subject, the argument of human beings with God. What Willa Cather and Isaac Bashevis Singer have that too few of the other novelists discussed in Stranger Than Fiction possess are central, important, great subjects.