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These essays unite history, philosophy, and social commentary to say something about the ebb and flow of ideas which shape post-modern accounts of who we are and where we came…

What starts as a method to optimize reading, exercise, or relationships becomes an end in itself. The native physiological benefit of the morning walk or bed-making is overshadowed by appeasing…

When a top campaign staffer complained to Mr. Percy that John could be abrasive, John posted on the office bulletin board a brochure from an actual trade group, the National…

They know their neighbors; and their neighbors, after all, are probably their kinsmen too, though it might take a careful genealogist to trace two neighboring streams back to their originating…

At the time of this writing, W. and D., with W. staying at D.’s side, remain faithful attenders of our church’s worship services and Bible studies. How long will this…

Hooten Wilson draws on theological as well as literary works to demonstrate various approaches to a text, leading to the contemplative mode, which she asserts should be “the end of…

Taken alone, the tactical state of childhood itself mounts a magnificent resistance to the rigidity of the adult world. But children do not live in a vacuum: they live in…

Our best ally should not be a man or woman who lacks the aptitude to discern right from wrong...one should not draw unto himself or herself a companion like Lady…

Somewhat surprisingly, this is also McCarthy at his most delighted at everyday joys. There are many tender passages of drinking coffee in porcelain cups in diners, eating tortillas and beans…

At all hours of the day and night in the Mannon house, you’ll find butter in its designated dish on the dinner table and cornmeal in the fridge. I hold…

Undergirding Leacock's work was not a desire to restore a previous version of Canada, but to preserve the gifts God had given: the best traditions of the past, the communities…

I bought myself an iPad in August 2016, and to say that it changed my life would be only a slight overstatement. For several years I had been experiencing increasingly…

Mark Clavier describes coming to terms with the fact that he is a white Southerner descended from enslaved Africans who subsequently became slave-owners. Reflecting on an ancestry containing triumph and…

Why have we persisted in peeing outdoors well after the advent of outhouses and toilets?

Little do I know that in a few days I will have died properly: by explosion.

That this country boasts something called “The Great American Songbook” is one of the best jokes around. The Great American Songbook? Our songs—let alone songbooks—don’t stick around long enough to…

Put in a garden and watch it come to life.

This may be a tad tardy, but Jeff Bilbro's write-up and assessment of the conference about Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed caught my eye for several reasons. One was the…

John Gatta is the William B. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at Sewanee: The University of the South. He’s the author of several excellent books, including Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion,…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 2018 has been a busy year for those of us who aspire to--or are at least somewhat animated by--localism here in Wichita, KS, the 50th-most…

“Corporate Progressivism.” Patrick Deneen reviews Darel Paul’s From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage. Here’s a taste: There is a striking alignment between this progressive valorization…

Sometimes the deluge of content that pours from our 24/7 media threatens to drown us under its cacophony of disinformation. Periodically, then, it is necessary to turn off the spigot…

The Pernicious Nature of Charity There is a pernicious force that operates in all societies, but especially in ours and especially in these sad days. It is a force that…

... where human affairs are conducted as if place really matters, where economic affairs are conceived as if limits really matter, and where political power is exercised as if liberty…