The Nightstand
From Postliberalism to Preliberalism: A Review of The Church Against the State
Next time we’re drinking bourbon together, I look forward to telling him that he’s got all the right impulses and is coming to the wrong conclusions.
More Articles in The Nightstand
Finding a Home Field: A Review of In Thought, Word, and Seed
If I am therefore departing one field in which I hoped to do some good work in place, I hope to deepen my practice as an English professor who lives and reads…
Rooted Lives or Activist Lifestyles?
In a world in which there are so many problems to solve, solitude plays an important role in helping us remember that life consists of more than finding and righting wrongs. Time…
The Timeless Way of Building: A Review
Why is it that we can all say that this building works, that this room is just right, that this town is good and pleasing? Why is it that we can all…
Bewilderment My Bow: A Review of Zero at the Bone
How are all these entries against despair? Insofar as metaphor is an act that creates meaning, it’s an act of hope: even intractable realities can be changed by placing them in new…
Localism Not Integralism: A Review of All the Kingdoms of the World
Self-government by local communities, including some tiny confessional states, would be more consistent with ideals of diverse, self-governing communities.
Boys in the Boarding School
If boarding school stories are exceptionally good at communicating certain universal themes despite the privileged setting, the lasting appeal of the setting offers some lessons, as well. The older we get, the…
Two Leftists Walk Into a Pandemic . . .
Not only did the worst consequences of lockdowns occur in the Global South, but lockdowns were pushed on the South from the North, through well-known strongarm tactics of neocolonialism that have consistently…
The Art of Activism: Conflict and Conversation in Mitali Perkins’ Hope in the Valley
Activism needs to begin by fearlessly staring down our own prejudices, by rooting out the injustices we allow. Once that is accomplished, we can turn to the outer world
Politics Before History
It is an MSNBC segment with pseudo-historical gloss. Billed as a warning to American democracy, it is a simple yet pretentious work that will do nothing to solve the problems bedeviling the…
New Beginnings: A Conversation with David Heddendorf about his Novel, The Terra Cotta Camel
David Heddendorf’s novel, The Terra Cotta Camel, is, as the subtitle accurately puts it, about “hope, new beginnings, and Des Moines.” It is about the small, the local, and the making of…
Marriage Will Kill You (And That’s Good)
You can either have a hard marriage or an unhealthy marriage. These are your options. And Key not only made me feel normal, but he made me want to live more faithfully…
For the Love of Books
Out-of-sight, out-of-mind is the quintessential modern American problem-solving strategy, and it sure does have a lot going for it, when it comes to dealing with our problem of stuff—that other quintessential modern…
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