Saturday Good Reads - July 15, 2023

Life and Culture 

“It’s a shame about Christopher Wray.” Kimberley Strassel at The Wall Steet Journal explains why the director of the FBI doesn’t get the problem faced by the agency. It isn’t the 38,000 agents working diligently every day to protect the country; it’s a handful of people at the very top of the FBI pyramid in Washington that have politicized the agency. (Article unlocked.)

 

Technology has become our god, says writer Paul Kingsnorth, and it is turning us into one vast machine. And AI won’t save the world, he says. In a guest post at The Free Press, Kingsnorth sees the internet and its associated social media as a disaster for mankind. “This is an extreme statement, but I’m in an extreme mood.”

 

Americans need moving vans? AP says it’s politics, politics, politics, politics, etc. – Terry Mattingly at Get Religion.

 

Faith

 

Can We Trust Luke’s History of the Early Jesus Movement? – Shane Rosenthal at The Humble Skeptic.

 

My three grandsons attend a classical Christian education school, and the difference from both public and other private schools is enormous (did you start to learn Latin in third grade?). It’s a small but growing development in education. Paul Krause at Front Porch Republic explains why the classics should be important to Christians.

 

After the initial burst, the news media walked away from coverage of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville; one reason is that the shooter, Audrey Hale, didn’t fit the prevailing narrative. Something else you won’t read: guess who paid for Hale’s funeral? Bethel McGrew at Further Up has the story.

 

Light into darkness: The Sound of Freedom movie – Jesse Johnson at The Cripplegate. Christianity Today, as it likes to do, has a different take on the movie, implying it’s exaggerated without explicitly saying that.

 

British Stuff

 

So Long, Libby Hall and Libby Hall’s London Dogs – at Spitalfields Life. Libby Hall collected old photographs of dogs – dogs by themselves, dogs with their owners, dogs with families. Both links at Spitalfields Life show some of these old photographs. But perhaps most extraordinarily of all, Libby Hall gave the blog writer (who goes by the name of The Gentle Author) a present – an inkwell that was likely owned by Charles Dickens. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

Robert Southwell was executed for treason in London in 1595. The charges against him included the fact that he was a Catholic priest (a Jesuit) and he had ties to the pope. But he was also a fine poet, and it’s likely that he knew William Shakespeare. Joseph Parce at The Imaginative Conservative looks for Southwell’s influence on the bard, and especially the play Romeo and Juliet.

 

Do readers really want shorter novels? – Nathan Bransford.

 

How Truman Capote Was Destroyed by His Own Masterpiece – Ebs Burnough at Literary Hub.

 

How Literature Lasts (and Popular Myths of Popularity) – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Poetry

 

Ways of Seeing – Merril D. Smith at Yesterday and today.

 

Slowly – Seth Lewis.

 

Art

 

Sometimes – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

American Stuff

 

I’d always heard that Abner Doubleday was the father of American baseball. Apparently, that was just a rumor. What wasn’t a rumor, however, was the role Doubleday stepped up to at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, and he may well have saved the battle, writes Stephen Ruiz at Military.com. 

 

Walt Whitman Birthplace Huntington – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era.

 

A form of popular entertainment in the 19^th century was the panorama, an often-very long and very large mural that unfolded like a scroll and depicted a variety of scenes. We were able to see one undergoing restoration at the St. Louis Art Museum. Hattie Felton at the Missouri Historical Society explains how the Mississippi River came to be one of the subjects of a panorama. 

 

Twelve Days: How the Union Nearly Lot Washington in the First Days of the Civil War by Tony Silber – Book review by Doug Crenshaw at Emerging Civil War.

 

“Let’s All Sit Down Now and Have a Hearty Cry”: Mark Wilcox at Emerging Revolutionary War Era tells the story of the kidnapping of Jemima Boone and two friends in 1776, and the rescue by the men led by Daniel Boone. The story inspired James Fenimore Cooper when he wrote The Last of the Mohicans.

 

The Lord’s Prayer (It’s Yours) – Matt Maher

Painting: Man Reading, oil on canvas (1940s) by Martin Snipper (1914-2008).