Saturday Good Reads - Feb. 26, 2022

The week seems bookended by international crises.  

Last weekend, Canada moved on its protesting truckers, laying bare what many have often observed about elite opinion in the United States: when the elites like your protest, they join with you. When they don’t, or feel vaguely threatened by your protest, they respond in often drastic and heavy-handed ways. Damon Linker at The Week discusses how the Freedom Convoy scrambled the left’s view of history.

 

By the end of this week, Russia was invading the Ukraine. Vladimir Putin didn’t bother to invent even false pretenses for his actions; he just did it. Like many dictators, he moves when he perceives weakness (we forget his snatching of the Crimea in 2014). Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative turns to a Russian prophet – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – and his words on the Ukraine Crisis.

 

I was a college sophomore studying for exams when I picked up a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and started reading. Bad timing on my part; I couldn’t put it down. Rand has always been associated with far right and libertarian beliefs. Not so fast, says a new book by Aaron Weinacht. He takes a look at the intellectual father of the Russian Revolution, a writer named Nicolai Chernyshevskii, whose really bad novel What is to Be Done? inspired a generation of nihilists, and he says there’s more than a strong connection between the two writers. Paul Krause at Front Porch Republic reviews the book. (I read the Chernyshevskii book in college, too, and I can testify that it was very easy to put down.)

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

Another Year Under the Sun: Learning Wisdom from a Long Pandemic – Matt McCullough at Desiring God.

 

Dances with Wolves: Recognizing False Teachers – Clint Archer at The Cripplegate.

 

None of Us Will Ever Forget What You Did – Tim Challies.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Flight of Big Tech – Joel Kotkin at Tablet Magazine. 

 

Herald of a new politics: The old coalitional politics of left and right have given way to tribal identity – Sebastian Milbank a The Critic Magazine.

 

The Information Superhighway is a Dead End – Chris Martin at Terms of Service.

 

The Fight for Curriculum Transparency – Christopher Rufo at CityJournal. 

 

Sick with guilt: On the loss of purpose in cultural institutions – New Criterion.

 

Poetry

 

Mouse – Jodie Hollander at The Hudson Review.

 

Lines to My Father – Countee Cullen at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Finding the Right Angle: Considering the perspective of poet and painter David Jones – Jack Hanson at Lapham’s Quarterly.

 

American Stuff

 

Underground Railroad secrets revealed with drones, lasers and radar – Mindy Weisberger at Live Science.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Contemplative Realism: The Germinal Yearnings of a New Literary Movement – Joshua Hren at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The lady vanishes: TV adaptations have masked the complexity and skill of Agatha Christie – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

News Media

 

A Word from Solomon about Social Media – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition. 

 

A Bird Without Wings – Celtic Thunder

Painting: The Messages Read, oil on canvas by James Tissot (1836-1902).