Make plans to join us for our fall conference in Grand Rapids, MI on October 4 and 5. Ross Douthat will be the keynote speaker.
Shakespeare’s Grief
After a pandemic took his son, the Bard would never be the same
The Excellence (and Implications) of Escaping the Housing Trap
All of this only touches the surface of Escaping the Housing Trap’s arguments and only begins the many productive discussions that should—and hopefully will!—follow in its wake. Buy and read the book, and join with your neighbors in talking about how Strong Towns can help make your community a place that can house all who need it.
Allegories of Pruning: Cutting for Growth
Pruning is difficult because we are forced to make a conscious decision to remove something that has been part of a growing plant. But these cuts are necessary and even life-giving.
That Brutal, Ferocious Thing: Watching Civil War
I must say that I did not want to write this review. I walked into the theatre with high hopes for Mr. Garland’s Civil War. I was hoping it would sober people to the actual horrors that a modern a civil war would entail.
Laughter is Courageous: A Review of Empire Between the Lines
As such, these papers provide the means for understanding how imperial concerns shaped the way Entente soldiers perceived themselves and the war. But even more importantly to my mind, the papers provide a window into the human soul and how humor springs eternal in the human breast, even in the most inhuman conditions imaginable.
What’s In Your Garage?
No home but the Garden was there originally for man, once upon a very long time ago. No garage either was part of life before expulsion from Eden.
Travels in Exotic Nebraska: A Review of American Harvest
The book is at its best when it embraces a more generous spirit. If one wishes to learn about traveling grain harvesters and to follow a literary description of the landscape, one will find it here.
President Biden and the Lost Cause
In Lost Cause debates, President Biden should be wary of casting the first stone: his own history demonstrates the complicated relationship the country has with its deadliest war and the men who led it.
Thinking About Wendell Berry’s Leftist Lament (and More)
Wendell Berry’s sprawling, uneven, brilliant, and sometimes frustrating The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice will likely not, I think,...
Gadfly Graffiti
In a funk no more, I was prepared to meet the smile of my daughters with a genuine smile of my own as they came out of practice. The graffiti was gadfly, but also gift.
News, Notes, and Podcasts
If you value FPR, consider supporting our work, purchasing books at our Bookshop page, and subscribing to our print journal.
From the Archives
Feeding the World from the Bottom Up
It is natural and normal, when looking at big problems, to look for big answers. Problems do not come much bigger than the subject...
On the Costs and Rewards of Planting Trees
I have just planted two apple trees from what my local nursery calls their “Posterity Collection,” heritage varieties grafted onto a slower-growing but durable and...
On Pigeons
Two autumns ago you couldn’t take a dozen steps without tripping over the decapitated corpse of a pigeon. There’d be one lying on the...