Saturday Good Reads - April 5, 2025

The New York Times had a surprising report this week about the war in Ukraine. The newspaper reported that the United States was far more deeply involved from the beginning, and that the Biden Administration both misled and outright lied to the American people about U.S. involvement and the threat of nuclear war. As one pundit noted, it was U.S. General Mark Milley who was calling the shots. 

Still another international surprise: Western media have been criticized for accepted war casualty figures reported with both immediacy and specificity by Hamas (or its health authority) in Gaza. One example: some 70 percent of the deaths have been reported to be women and children. This week, Hamas quietly revised the numbers; 72 percent of the deaths turn out to be combat-aged men. Notice the widespread coverage of the revision in American media? I didn’t either.

 

I’ve been watching a “equal protection under the law” train wreck approaching in Britain. The Sentencing Council, essentially a group of British judges who issue guidelines and polices for the court system there, was proposing a two-tier sentencing system – more lenient sentences for minorities and harsher sentences for whites for the same crimes. It was so bad (and causing such a bad public reaction) that even Keir Starmer’s Labour government was compelled to oppose the plan, even saying it would introduce legislation to stop it. Thankfully, the Sentencing Council has backed down. For now.

 

More Good Reads

 

Art

 

The art of experience: Caspar David Freidrich – James Steven Curl at The Critic Magazine.

 

Neater – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Faith

 

What is Man? – Carl Trueman at The New Jerusalem.

 

Maintaining Friendships in a Lonely Age – Thomas Kidd.

 

Why Hospitality in the New Testament Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

 

Be Wary of 1%-er Rhetoric – Just Poythress.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Demons and Monsters in George Bernanos – Cyril O’Regan at Church Life Journal.

 

Life and Culture

 

Secularist Violence in Modern History: An Interview with Thomas Albert Howard – Nadya Williams at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Other Cancel Culture – Dixie Dillon Lane at Front Porch Republic.

 

Restoring the Humanities: An Education That’s Not for Dummies – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

American Stuff

 

Jay Bhattacharya Was ‘Dangerous.’ Now He Leads the NIH – Bari Weiss at The Free Press. 

 

Stacking Arms: The Cockade City Unravels – Aaron Stoyack at Emerging Civil War.

America 250

 

Mapping the American Revolution and Its Era  – John Sellers at the Library of Congress.

 

Patrick Henry: From the American Revolution to Saving the Union – John Ragosta at Ben Franklin’s World.

 

Poetry

 

Ad Astera – Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.

 

“Wind in the Grass,” poem by Mark Van Doren – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Planets: Jupiter – Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra Flash Mob

Painting: Woman at a Window, oil on canvas by Albert Andre (1969-1954, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Saturday Good Reads - June 15, 2024

If you visit New Orleans, a must-see is the D-Day Museum, expanded into the World War II Museum. You can watch movies about the war in Europe and the Pacific (part of the admission fee) produced by Steven Spielberg. And the exhibits are incredible. The reason the museum ended up in New Orleans has to do with a man named Andrew Jackson Higgins, whose New Orleans firm designed and manufactured the D-Day landing boats. Higgins has been called “the man who won the war for us.” 

Charles Dickens was a major writer (some say the major writer) of the 19^th century, but he wasn’t a poet. And yet. Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern considers a poem he wrote and placed in The Pickwick Papers. It’s about a dying frog, of all things. 

 

This is what passes for journalism today. Concerning the rescue of the four Israeli hostages, CNN reported they’d been “freed” and Reuter’s sad they’d been “released.” And the BBC asked an Israeli interviewee if the residents of the apartment building where three of the hostages were imprisoned should have been warned first. (Not to mention that three of four rescued were being held in the apartment of a journalist for Al-Jazeera.) Seth Mandel at Commentaryexplains the truth about the war in Gaza.

 

Quote of the Week: “The New York Times, which will delete its own website before admitting they got anything wrong about Biden, Russia, or Covid, is still saying the Hunter Biden laptop could all be fake: ‘Many claims about the laptop’s contents have not been proved, but it played a role in the prosecution of Mr. Biden over a firearm purchase.’ Hmmm. Claims. Not been proved.” – Nellie Bowles, The Free Press.

 

More Good Reads

 

Israel

 

Why We Shouldn’t Trust ‘The Facts’ Coming Out of Gaza – Eli Lake at The Free Press.

 

Israel Killed 31 of My Family Members in Gaza. The Pro-Palestine Movement Isn’t Helping – Ahmed Fouad Alkatahib at The Free Press.

 

I Went to Cover a Protest. I Was Surrounded by a Mob – Olivia Reingold at The Free Press.

 

Iron Dome: Israel’s Double-Edged Sword, Part 1 – Michael Oren at Clarity with Michael Oren. 

 

Activism Uncensored: Thousands surround White House with two-mile long “red line” banner for Palestine – Ford Fischer and Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

American Stuff

 

The Foundation of American Folly – N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval.

 

Lincoln’s Grief – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

Faith

 

Dickens, Diabetes, and Positive-Sum Games – Dr. Anne Bradley at Acton Institute.

 

Does Bach’s Music Prove the Existence of God? – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

1994 and All That, 30 Years On – Matthew Hosier at Think Theology.

 

Culture

 

A Doctor Told the Truth. The Feds Showed Up at His Door – Emily Yoffe at The Free Press.

 

FBI Asked Co-Workers of Bureau Employee About Trump Support, Vaccine Beliefs – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

We are not Users: The Hidden Impact of Digital Labels – Brent Lucia at Far From Equilibrium. 

 

How Public Schools Became Ideological Boot Camps – Robert Pondiscio at The Free Press.

 

Ukraine

 

War and (A Just) Peace in Ukraine – Yury Avvakumov at Church Life Journal.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Good (and Bad) Fathers: Six Perspectives on Fictional Fathers, for Father’s Day – Dixie Dillon Labe at The Hollow.

 

The Problems Posed by AI and Flannery O’Connor’s Unfinished Novel – Jessica Hooten Wilson at Church Life Journal.

 

Poetry

 

The Inaugural First Things Poetry Prize – First Things Magazine.

 

Longfellow’s Bridge – Gunny Markefka at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Looking – poem by David Whyte.

 

British Stuff

 

‘I wouldn’t call it a victory’: Fossil Free Book Organizers on Baillie Gifford’s exit from literary festival funding – Lucy Knight at The Guardian.

 

J.S. Bach’s “Chaconne” – Marc Bouchkov and the Frankfort Radio Symphony

 Painting: An old man reading by candlelight, oil on canvas by Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706).

Saturday Good Reads - April 13, 2024

This past week, The Free Press, under the editorship of Bari Weiss, passed 630,000 subscribers and became the largest site on Substack. In the opinion of this holder of a journalism degree, it’s one of the few publications practicing recognizable journalism left in the United States. (Also in the opinion of this holder of a journalism degree: Donald Trump is not the greatest threat to journalism; that dubious honor belongs to the news media itself.) Also making waves in the journalism world this week: Uri Berliner, senior business editor at NPR, explaining how the broadcaster lost America’s trust. 

I’ve followed the site posts of the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics for some 14 years. It’s one of the leading sites exploring the subject of work and faith – and practicing faith in the workplace. One of its most prolific writers, but not the only one by far, was site founder Hugh Whelchel. Hugh died from complications of ALS on March 29. His colleague Jacqueline Isaacs honors what he accomplished.

 

Writer and writing coach Ann Kroeker knows a thing or two about writing and writers’ conferences, and she has a guide for how to get the most out of your next one – or your first one.

 

More Good Reads

 

Israel / Gaza

 

Why I Got a Gun – Matti Friedman at The Free Press.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Invention of Parenting – Holly Taylor Coolman at Church Life Journal.

 

The reckoning over puberty blockers has arrived – Leon Sapir at The Hill.

 

The Real Book About the “White Working Class” – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The 3 Best Writing Tips I’ve Gotten from Masters, and the Four Best Writing Tips I’ve Given – Peter Blauner at Writer’s Digest.

 

When a 24-Year-Old Ian Fleming Went to Moscow to Cover a “Show” Trial – Nicholas Shakespeare at Lithub.

 

Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Faith

 

Christianity before Christendom – Stephen Presley at Law & Liberty. 

 

The Case for Holy Obstinacy – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Your elders will fail you – Bryan Schneider at Gentle Reformation.

 

Stewardship Is Not About Giftedness; It’s About Faithfulness – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress. 

 

Ukraine

 

Russia’s intensifying attacks have not demoralized Kharkiv – Julius Strauss at The Spectator.

 

News Media

 

Google Chrome’s massive changes threaten the open web – but users have little sympathy – Hamza Shaban at Yahoo Finance.

 

New York Times Bosses Seek to Quash Rebellion in the Newsroom – Alexandra Bruell at The Wall Street Journal.

 

The Reporter Fighting for America’s Free Press – Catherine Herridge’s statement to Congress via The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

“The Literary Lady,” poem by Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

American Stuff

 

Julian Assange Gave America the Ugly Truth – Rupa Subramanya at The Free Press.

 

British Stuff

 

The building that inspired Orwell – Charles Saumarez Smith at The Critic Magazine.

 

Kathy’s Song – Art Garfunkel

 

Painting: The Artist’s Wife, oil on canvas (1933) by Henry Lamb (1883-1960).

Saturday Good Reads - March 9, 2024

For years, my wife and I have dutifully recycled. Our suburb has had an active recycling program for a long time. At one time, you brought your materials to the center. Now, it’s curbside pickup. Some months back, we read that nearly 90 percent of all plastics that are theoretically recycled actually aren’t, simply because there’s no competitive market. And most of those recycled plastic bottles, detergent jugs, and other #1, #2, and #5 materials end up being shipped to places like Nigeria, where they are promptly dumped into rivers flowing to the ocean. The Center for Climate Integrity recently published a report, “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling.” 

I’ve been thinking about producing a new bingo card, with a space for every time this year I hear “threat to democracy,” “end of democracy,” and similar sentiments. These sentiments are usually expressed by people willing to do anything to discredit a certain political candidate. And if it means destroying democracy in the process, so be it, reminding me of that army major in Vietnam who said, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Mark Tapscott at The Epoch Times describes a different direction for the threat to democracy, describing how the government used “Track F” to fund censorship tools. Matt Taibbi at Racket News describes an award he’s getting, and why it’s so worrisome as America enters the “Samizdat Era.”

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Campus confidential: Inside the secret Cambridge societies hiding their unfashionable views – Charlie Bentley-Astor at The Critic Magazine.

 

Liberals and the Libel of “Christian Nationalism” – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

Ten Years without Gabriel Garcia Marquez: An Oral History – Silvana Paternostro at The Paris Review.

 

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Guide to a Christian Classic – Austin Freeman at Desiring God.

 

American Stuff

 

The Soldier by the Road – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Nathan Bedford Forrest Redeemed? Part 1 and Part 2 – Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War.

 

The Women Codebreakers Who Uncovered Some of the Cold War’s Most Notorious Spies – Katherine Reay at CrimeReads. 

 

Faith

 

Holly Ordway on Tolkien’s Faith – Alan Cornett at Front Porch Republic.

 

Decisive Moments: The Fall of Jerusalem – Wes Bredenhof.

 

Ukraine

 

The epic battle that saved Kyiv from Russian occupation – Tim Mak at The Counteroffensive.

 

Art

 

New dawn: The birth of Impressionism revisited 150 years later in Paris exhibition – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper. See exhibition page at Musee d’Orsay.

 

Place – Sonja Benskin Mesher. 

 

Poetry

 

To Catch the Wind – Lucia Haase at Society of Classical Poets. 

 

The Seafarer: Man’s Despairing Mind, Wyrd Waters, & Gold in Death – Cody Ilardo at Power & Glory. 

 

Tea Cakes with Jesus – Kate Gaton at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Archaeology

 

An Astounding Excavation Uncovered a Medieval Village Under an Ancient Abbey – Darren Orf at Popular Mechanics.

 

News Media

 

“The Silly Furor Over “Allegedly” – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

LinkedIn doubles down on news as social rivals retreat – Sara Fischer at Axios.

 

Lexington – Casey McPherson of Alpha Rev

 Painting: St. Luke, oil on canvas (1625) by Frans Hals (ca. 1582-1666); Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art.

Saturday Good Reads - Feb. 24, 2024

The gentle author (that’s the pen name he uses) at Spitalfields Life used 1927 cigarette cards of Dickens’ London and took a walk to see the buildings, or remnants of buildings, that might still be there. And he took photographs, so you can juxtapose the drawings on the cards with the photos. As it turns out, one of them, the Water Gate at Essex Street, features an area in my novel Dancing Prophet. Another one, 48 Doughty Street, is the home of the Charles Dickens Museum.  

Stanford Medicine published a study that identified distinct brain organization patterns in women and men. While it’s something my wife could have told them without spending the research money, it’s still interesting that there is scientific evidence for it. I can’t even imagine the outrage this is going to evoke.

 

Dr. Michael Kruger, professor at and president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, notes one of the markers or characteristics of very early Christians. And it remains a marker of contemporary Christians. From earliest times, Christians were “people of the text.”

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

Westminster Abbey and the Danger of Inhospitality – John Beeson at The Bee Hive.

 

When Cultural Tailwinds Become Cultural Headwinds – Stephen McAlpine.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Cormac McCarthy’s Sideline: Freelance Copy Editor – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Fiction and Time – John Wilson at Prufrock. 

 

Any Day Now: An Adventure Story – Henry Lewis at Story Warren. 

 

Life and Culture

 

Katherine Brodsky Is Not Sorry – Rod Dreher at Rod Dreher’s Diary.

 

“Critical Thinking”: What Does It Really Mean? – Daniel Lattier at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Unpacking of “Separation of Church and State” – Alan Strange at Crossway.

 

Poetry

 

Lenten Sonnet – Andrew Peterson at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Disobedience” by A.A. Milne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Getting to Stop by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Simeon Swinger at Mere Orthodoxy. 

 

American Stuff

 

Roosevelt’s Grief – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic. 

 

“A Heart Devoted to the Welfare of Our Country” – John Quincy Adams’ inaugural address via The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

How the 1619 Project Distorted History – James Oakes at Jacobin.

 

Art 

 

Metaphor and Rain of one afternoon – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Early Gerhard Richter mural, painted over in 1979, resurfaces in Dresden – Catherine Hickley at The Art Newspaper.

 

Ukraine

 

War and Genocide in the Name of God – Nicholas Denysenko at Church Life Journal.

 

Shadow of Shaddai – Steffany Gretzinger

Painting: Portrait of a Rabbi. Oil on canvas circa 1900. Artist unknown.

Saturday Good Reads - Dec. 30, 2023

The Free Press hosted an essay contest for seniors (you had to be over 70 to enter), and the results were rather stunning. The winner selected was Michael Tobin, 77, who told a marvelous story about his brilliant wife. Read “A Love Song for Deborah.”  

The Advent 2023 edition of An Unexpected Journal has been posted, and it’s (almost) all things Dostoevsky. Under the general theme of “Sober Hope: Finding Faith in the Bleak Midwinter,” included are some 21 articles on the Russian writer’s novels, short stories, his faith, adaptations of his novels into film, poetry and a story about him, a biography review, his place in literature, and more. It’s a smashingly good edition.

 

It's not a word I would associate with Hamas, the terrorist organization, but Matti Friedman at The Free Press does. The word is wisdom. He writes that Hamas has wisdom because it’s figured out what it’s fighting for, and the West hasn’t. Hamas also understood how western elites would likely respond to its attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

 

For those who think the reports of rapes and sexual violence were an exaggeration or Israel was to blame, or for those who turned their backs on what really happened on Oct. 7, The New York Times published a story that provides the details. 

 

The controversy continues to swirl around Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard. The debate has shifted, though, from equivocating remarks about genocide to her use of others’ work, which we used to call plagiarism but renamed by the Harvard Board of Governors as “duplicative language,” and questions about her research data. Peter Wood at The Spectator explains that plagiarism matters, for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is how you can discipline students or faculty for plagiarism when all they have to do is claim “duplicative language”?

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

The first episode of the Howdy Doody Show aired on NBC on Dec. 27, 1947 – Timeless Television.

 

Top 10 YouTubes of 2023 – Denny Burk.

 

When the Left Can No Longer Dream – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

American Stuff

 

The secret U.S. effort to track, hide and surveil the Chinese spy balloon – Courtney Kube and Carol Lee at NBC News.

 

The Fateful Nineties – Christopher Caldwell at First Things Magazine.

 

News Media

 

Democracy Dies in Daylight – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

GetReligion will close on Feb. 2, the 20^th anniversary of this blog’s birth – Terry Mattingly at GetReligion.

 

Writing and Literature

 

All Good Books Are Alike – James Witmer at Story Warren.

 

Intention: a short story written in the aftermath of Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israel – Etgar Keret at The Guardian.

 

The Miracle of the Bells: A Forgotten Novel & Film – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Faith

 

Craft and Theology: The Reason – Nathaniel Marshall at Front Porch Republic.

 

Why Is the Lord’s Supper Important? – Murungi Igweta at Tabletalk.

 

Everything Is Going Wrong in the World? G. Campbell Morgan Remind Us to Adjust Our Focus – Randy Alcorn at Eternal Perspectives Ministries/ 

 

Poetry

 

A Video Excerpt of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Andrew Benson Brown at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Small thing – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

An Abandoned Cemetery – Carey Jobe at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Art

 

Hans Holbein, the inventor of portraits – David Starkey at The Spectator.

 

History

 

Why the Dark Ages Weren’t Really All That Dark – Robbie Mitchell at Ancient Origins.

 

Ukraine

 

Battle for the past: the Ukrainians trying to save their archaeological treasure amid war – Charlotte Higgins at The Guardian.

 

You’ll Never Walk Alone – Madison Scouts

 Painting: A man reading, oil on canvas by Eugene-Francois De Block (1812-1893). 

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 30, 2023

The event in question happened during the Bush Administration, was litigated during the Obama Administration, and continued through the Trump and Biden Administrations. It’s hard to get more bipartisan than that. The vent is the long-sought extradition of Julian Assange, for publishing in WikiLeaks the information provided by Chelsea Manning. Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, published an article in the London Evening Standard, and it’s worth reading to see the Assanges’ side of the story.

Author Mike Duran is publishing a second edition of his non-fiction book Christian Horror. It’s a fiction genre that has a growing body of readers, and Mike explains what’s behind the new edition.

 

Back in the 1980s, I discovered science fiction. I was captivated by authors like Robert Silverberg, Arthur Clarke, Jerry Pournelle, and a lot of others. I found my way to Frank Herbert and the Dune novels, and they were a marvelous read (I never thought of cinnamon in quite the same way after reading them). Ryan Britt at Literary Hub writes about how the Dune novels came to be. 

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Flapper Economics – Philip Jeffrey at American Compass.

 

The wellspring of woke – Laurie Wastell at The Critic Magazine.

 

Michael Gambon was so much more than Professor Dumbledore – Alexander Larman at The Spectator.

 

American Stuff

Missed America: Attacking the right without asking about the left – Johann Neem at The Hedgehog Review. 

William Faulkner’s Last Words & the American Dilemma – M.E. Bradford at The Imaginative Conservative.

News Media

Forget collusion, Was “interference” also fake news? And Timeline: DARPA and the DNC Hack – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

Writing and Literature

 

George Orwell: Terrific Writer, Terrible Husband – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

A Dazzling Dozen – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

“To Be a Writer, You Must Write:” How Joan Didion Became Joan Didion – Evelyn McDonnell at Literary Hub

 

Art

 

The elephant in the avant-garde – James Steven Curl at The Critic Magazine.

 

Faith

 

Crowned – Kristin Couch at The Palest Ink.

 

New “Gospel” Manuscript Discovered? – Michael Kruger at The Gospel Coalition.

 

What Smaller Churches Get Wrong When They Look at Bigger Churches – Tim Wilson at Affinity.

 

3 Times You Should Disobey Authority – Jonathan Leeman at Crossway.

 

Lives of the Wild Saints – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Ukraine

 

Nazi-linked veteran received ovation during Zelenskyy’s Canadian visit – Kyle Duggan at Politico. 

 

Crown Him with Many Crowns – Michael W. Smith

 Photograph by David Lezcano via Unsplash. Used with permission.