Short

A Hidden Life, Carbon Credits, and the American Solidarity Party

“Has Our Food Become Safer in the Last 10 Years?” Four experts discuss food safety regulations, consolidation, and local food systems for Civil Eats. “Starting Seeds.”...

Back Row America, Marilynne Robinson, and Peter Maurin

“Our Unsexy Future.” Joseph Bottum reviews Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity by Jamie Metzl, drawing attention to “an underappreciated principle of any...

“Who’s going to take care of these people?”

This is a sad and beautifully written portrait of a hospital in rural Oklahoma shutting down, perhaps to be re-opened, but probably for good....

Underrating Humans, John Lukacs, and the Digital Town Square

“James Matthew Wilson on What Poetry Is, and Isn’t.” Mary Spencer interviews James Matthew Wilson for National Review about his work as a poet. “Are Robots Really...

Aaron Wolf, Kansas, and a Treasonous Meritocrat?

“‘It’s a Groundswell’: The Farmers Fighting to Save the Earth’s Soil.” Matthew Taylor reports for The Guardian on how no-till farming, or “conservation agriculture” can help...

Underland, 737 Max, and Earth Day

“What Lies Beneath: Robert Macfarlane Travels ‘Underland.’” Robert Macfarlane writes about his new book and the subterranean journeys it traces. “Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson and...

English Land Ownership, The Overstory, and Artificial Intelligence

“Winning the Peace.” Part reflection on C.S. Lewis’s “Learning in War-Time” and part a response to Alan Jacobs’s The Year of Our Lord 1943, Christopher...

Madeleine L’Engle, Slow Media, and Populism

“A Flourishing Tree.” Tamara Hill Murphy reviews Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace by Christie Purifoy, a book that circles “round and round the...

Monsanto, the Heartland Forum, and Becoming Creaturely

“The Center Holds.” Nicole M. King reviews The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early Twentieth-Century Midwestern Regionalism, 1880-1940, edited by Jon K. Lauck, for...

The Table, Topsoil, and the Midwest

Plough Quarterly No. 20: The Welcome Table. The Spring issue of Plough Quarterly is online and has many essays of interest to Porchers. To mention just...