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The Nightstand

More Articles in The Nightstand

Phantom Menace: America’s Enduring Fixation with Fascism

The reader may be none the wiser regarding the definition of fascism, but this book affords a wisdom and moderation of sorts all the same, one that stems from the awareness that…
January 18, 2023

Après Nous, Le Déluge

What keeps me on one side rather than the other is my belief that if we had been living more fully in that real world, a lot of what we call “the…
January 16, 2023

Samson-Oak: A Review of The Common Misfortunes of Everyday Plants

Nature is never pure in these poems; it is always responding to human care or lack-of-care, commodified, and, indeed, turned into a symbol by the poet herself. Emerson doesn't hide the grief…
January 12, 2023

True Myth in Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi

We taste myth when we read Piranesi, because in the story, like in Barfield’s exploration of how the meaning of words changes over time, we are taken out of our modern sensibilities…
January 11, 2023

The Power of Place: Huckberry’s Dirt

Huckberry’s success speaks to a desire for adventure and relationship with the land within the American public. People want to go backpacking and hiking and ride their motorcycles across the vast expanses…
January 9, 2023

Wyrd Winter Wondered Worlds

Parker’s Winters in the World is an education fit for the Humanities and lay person who wishes to expand upon what it means to exist as humans in a world full of…
January 4, 2023

Cancel War Stories

People often want to ignore the complexity of that process, downplay how often interests conflict, and avoid confrontation. In this essay, I suggest we throw ourselves into the mess and hash it…
January 2, 2023

Community Greening in The Lord of the Rings: Samwise Gamgee and the Power of Local Care

J. R. R. Tolkien imagined a society characterized by people who care for one another and their natural spaces, cultivating human and ecological flourishing in their communities.

Rummaging the Word Hord

In order to reconcile competing and hostile cultures in our current, chaotic milieu, it is necessary to forge a politics of honesty and integrity. As hinted by The Wordhord’s emphasis on daily…
December 26, 2022

Monson, Maine’s Fascinating Story: A Review of Here & Everywhere Else

Manchester, NH. The prospect of moving from our little cottage in New Hampshire causes me great pain. Why? Because I am a creature of place and my surroundings, the people, the landscape,…
December 19, 2022

A Christian Critique and the Neoliberal Future: A Review of Naming Neoliberalism

Clapp’s ambitious study attempts a great deal within a comparatively brief compass. Unfortunately, some topics suffer as a result...How can one best understand the tension between individual moral responsibility (rooted in Protestantism)…
December 14, 2022

Cormac McCarthy’s Sorrow of Creatures

Are dreams only dreams? Or are they God’s gifts of the unconscious which we still fail to know? McCarthy lets these questions remain, and no argument or worldview can answer them. So,…
December 5, 2022
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