In The Washington Post, Michael Dirda discusses Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces, a thrilling new account of Italy’s 1966 flood. Check it out, and add this to your autumn reading list. It’s on mine.

Full disclosure: I enjoyed a dinnertime conversation with Robert Clark and Image editor Greg Wolfe last week, and we discussed writing, faith, and favorite films. I was happy to discover that I’m not alone in rating Paul Thomas Anderson as my favorite living American filmmaker. Clark does too. I’d love to see what Anderson would do taking on an adaptation of one of Clark’s books…