Oprah Winfrey’s selection of a grim, terrifying, post-apocolyptic novel for her national book club has raised some eyebrows, but Gail Caldwell says that “in a year when a former presidential contender is being touted at the Oscars for a documentary on climatic ruin, Oprah’s attention to [Cormac] McCarthy’s novel makes a fine (and hardly risky) bid for planetary conscience.”