Latest Posts

March 27, 2025

The Secular and the Dead

More than a decade ago, I had the privilege of visiting Tuol Sleng, a museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that displays in horrific detail the murderous brutality committed by the totalitarian Khmer Rouge, which governed the country from 1975 to 1979. Continue Reading...
March 26, 2025

Severance and the Bifurcated Self

One of the topics of the times is work-life balance. Should you work all the time, like Elon Musk? Should you embrace the workless life of social media influencers? To be middle class is a mix of the two. Continue Reading...
March 25, 2025

Flannery O’Connor at 100

It’s jarring, maybe, to think of Flannery O’Connor as an old lady. Then again, to our eyes, in photographs from the last years of her life, maybe she looks already old. Continue Reading...
March 20, 2025

Pope Francis’ Plea for Migrants and Acton’s Core Principles

Pope Francis’ papacy has been characterized by a consistent emphasis on reaching out to the marginalized and accompanying them with love and mercy. The Holy Father speaks often of those on the peripheries: the forgotten, the excluded, those who interrupt the rhythms of our lives because they require more attention and care than most. Continue Reading...
March 19, 2025

The What Ifs and What Was of American History

Professor Walter A. McDougall’s new book, Gems of American History, is subtitled The Lecturer’s Art, an apt phrase for a collection of lectures delivered to audiences ranging from the Museum of the American Revolution to the Agnes Irwin School. Continue Reading...
March 12, 2025

Ross Douthat Wants You to Believe

In Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, Ross Douthat relates a story from a couple of decades ago, in which he had a late-night conversation with the famously combative atheist Christopher Hitchens. Continue Reading...
March 11, 2025

Are You Free?

The early Protestant Reformers famously disbelieved in the freedom of the will. And yet they gave us a legacy of freedom. This paradox is at the heart of Brad Littlejohn’s Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License. Continue Reading...
March 06, 2025

We Are All Makers

There’s a particular pleasure in reading books about making. Business books are “maker” books, in a sense. So are self-help books. The best of these “maker” books are the ones with lots of anecdotes, where we get to see the principles at work. Continue Reading...