For religious persons, the notion of human being is tied inextricably to the notion of God (or the gods) and turns on this question: what is human being? How did we, with our almost infinite capacities for thought, change, and domination, come to be? Imbued with powers far beyond any other animal, humans are too faulty to be considered gods themselves. Yet, the idea of God (or the gods) appears in all distinctive human cultures: it names the other pole of human-it designates a being who re...

IN 1861, AMERICA’S GREATEST DETECTIVE SAVED THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. AND THIS IS HER TRUE STORY. America is at a crossroads. Abraham Lincoln, the man tasked with healing the nation, and his family are the targets of a conspiracy to assassinate them. Their safety – and the future of the American experiment – hinges on the success of a new kind of lawman, known by a word still novel in the culture: detective. But there was only one detective whose extraordinary cleverness, versatility an...