The Nightstand

Can You (or anyone) Put Wendell Berry’s Lightning in the Bottle...

Below is the text of a review for Orthodox Presbyterians -- of all people -- of Jack Baker and Jeff Bilbro's new book on...

Love in the Place of Almost Death

At the height of the political tension in King Lear, the corrupt usurpers of Lear’s throne are at the helm of Britain’s defense against...

Learning to Distinguish between Demonic and Redemptive Technologies

In a recent essay for Christianity Today, “Do All Plants Go to Heaven?,” Abigail Murrish speculates that GMOs might be present in the New...

Blowing Up the Bert: The Outside Story

Two years ago I witnessed the abrupt transformation of an old and distinguished literary magazine. For the people doing the transforming, of course, the...

Educating Humans to Subvert Technocracy

Alan Jacobs’s new book, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis, traces a fascinating intellectual debate that arose...

Redeeming Capitalism is an Uphill Battle

Recently there has been a growing sense that capitalism is at best a mixed blessing. Though the material benefits that accompany its massive wealth...

My Àntonia at One Hundred

Willa Cather is the quintessential novelist of the American prairie.  That distinction comes to her first because she spent her formative years on the...

Love in the Void: A New Collection of Simone Weil’s Writings

This selection of writings aims to make manifest to the reader Simone Weil’s “intensity in the pursuit of truth” and the “sense of the...

Catastrophe, Technology, Limits, and Localism

Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet, published earlier this year, is a fabulous book. Not a perfect book; sometimes, in order to...

Social Isolation as the Fruit of Liberalism

Loneliness is on the rise. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young people. Our social media networks may number in...