Some Monday Readings - April 20, 2026

 

Reading is magic – Sam Kriss at Numb at the Lodge. 

Tales from the road: The dead of Falling Waters, a forgotten Gettysburg Campaign battle – John Banls’ Civil War Blog.

 

No, Books Are Note Remotely Too Expensive – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

A New Wild West in Jackson, Louisiana – James Taylor Foreman at The Dispatch.

 

A Week of Tears. A Week of Storms – Katie Andraskie at Katie’s Ground.

 

Publishing has an AI problem – Alexander Larman at The Critic Magazine.

 

Learn the Hard Way – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

How Big Pharma (Successfully) Targeted Women – Matt Bivens at Racket News.

 

A Christian Philosophy of Education – Howard Merken at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Photograph: The Falling Waters historical marker.

“In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral” by Margaret Willes

The first time I was in St. Paul’s Churchyard was May of 1983. My wife and I had traveled to London to celebrate our 10^th wedding anniversary. On a Sunday afternoon, she was resting in our hotel room, and I’d hopped a tube train to visit the newly opened Museum of London before walking around St. Paul’s a few blocks to the south. At 3 p.m., I was standing in front of St. Paul’s when the church bells began to peal. It was one of those “just stop and listen moments.” 

Last fall, we were once again in the churchyard, visiting the Temple Bar exhibition just to the north of the church, and then a few days later we toured the cathedral itself. We walked around the churchyard, visited a gift and souvenir shop, and took our “standing in front of the cathedral” tourist photos. We knew the basic history of the cathedral – Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt the church followed its destruction in the Great Fire of 1666. And we knew that the area around the church had been heavily bombed during World War II; the church itself took one major hit but was protected by the firewatchers stationed on the roof and nearby.

 

But the area around the church has a long and momentous history, as writer Margaret Willes details in In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral: The Churchyard that Shaped London. The history of the area is inevitably linked to the history of the church, but also to much more.

 

In medieval times, the yard was host to speeches and sermons. The Reformation, Counter-Reformation and New Reformation were argued and fought here. The yard witnessed a few executions. Once the printing press was invented, printers set up shop in this area, mostly printing religious tracts and documents. They eventually evolved into book printers and publishers, both in St. Paul’s Churchyard and nearby Paternoster Row. Publishers branched out into selling books directly to the public, becoming the cradle and center of Britain’s book publishing industry.

 

Willes tells this fascinating history well. The chapters on the Great Fire (and how printers thought they could secure their stocks inside the church itself) and the rebuilding by Wren are especially good. She provides detail in just the right amounts. The people come alive, and their stories become the stories of the churchyard. 

 

Margaret Willes

Willes is the former publisher at the National Trust who now writes books on cultural and botanical history. Her works include Liberty over London Bridge, The Curious World of Samuel Pepys & John Evelyn, The Gardens of the British Working Class, The Making of the English Gardener, Reading Matters Five Centuries of Discovering Books, The Domestic Herbal, and Scenes from a Georgian Life.

 

The story of St. Paul’s Churchyard ends when the thriving society and industry around it ended – with the blitz of World War II. Other than the cathedral itself, much of the surrounding area was destroyed. But as Willes tells it, what had been there was a wonder.

 

Related:

 

Margaret Willes on The Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral – interview with Aspect of History.

 

In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral – Margaret Willes (1666) – podcast at Travels Through Time. 

 

Top photograph: The interior dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

What New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman Gets Wrong about Rural America – Wendell Berry at Barn Raiser.

 

“We Are Wrong” – a poem on Israel by Michael Vanyukov at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Why Did West Point Remove ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ From Its Mission Statement? – John Lucas at The Federalist.

Self-Help or Self-Hype?

In Roman times, had there been a bestsellers list, perennial favorites surely would have included How to be Emperor Longer than Three Months, Gladiator Games for Dummies, and How to Profit in the Coming Dark Ages. In medieval times, I could imagine a title like How to Fight a Hundred Years War in 100 Minutes – and Win. I suppose Martin Luther could have cashed in with Who Moved My Theology or Write a Hymn in 30 Minutes or Less.

The book publishing genre of “self-help” books has enjoyed a long history, although I’m not completely positive they extend back to the glory days of the Roman Empire.

When I first became aware of self-help books in the bookstore in the 1970s, some of the best known ones were Passages by Gail Sheehy; Robert Ringer’s Looking Out for No. 1; Born to Win by Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward (remember transactional analysis?); A Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis; and Leo Buscaglia’s Love.

Self-help books follow a relatively simple formula: find a common, everyday problem (or find something that could potentially be a common, everyday problem), break the problem down into five (or six or seven) components, and then present the three (or four or five) parts of a solution. A self-help book needs to be written in simple language; if you can utilize the fable or story approach, even better.

Some are well written and thought-provoking. Most have their day in the sun and are then forgotten. But publishers publish them for one very simple reason.

They sell.

They sell to a secular audience, and they sell to a Christian audience.

The question isn’t “Why are they published?” Publishers are in business to make money, and if the public wants self-help books, then publishers will be there to meet the demand. We can get all academic and literary about it and sniff our noses while Who Moved My Cheese sells millions of copies and extraordinary novels languish, struggling to sell even 500 copies, but the marketplace is the marketplace. And it’s likely that without the success of Who Moved My Cheese, a publisher couldn’t afford to take a chance on a novel, no matter how extraordinary.

The real question is, “Why do we buy them?”

I suggest three reasons.

First, self-help books are invariably about me. They’re not called “self-help” for no reason. They personalize a common problem, the one that you think that you alone are experiencing.

Second, everyone else is reading them. We like to read what everyone else is reading. We like to read bestsellers. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal don’t publish lists of “The Best Books Selling Virtually No Copies This Week.”

Third, they offer simple solutions, often by projecting the author’s experience on to millions of other people. And we want simple solutions to our problems. Difficult solutions suggest that life isn’t as simple as we want it to be. And they mean hard work, often for a lifetime, and who wants to do that while you’re preparing for your 15 minutes of fame?

In Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day, Todd Henry says “we want the results without the uncertainty and risk. The hard truth is that there is no real and lasting success without the potential for failure. The pain of the journey is what allows you to sustain your success on the other side.” (I should point out here that while I’ve enjoyed reading Die Empty, it is a self-help book, although different from the kind I’ve read before.)

This is not the understanding to which self-help books usually appeal. We want our problems simply, neatly, and quickly. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that simple, neat, and quick solutions to problems rarely if ever exist. Life is thorny, difficult, and challenging for all of us. It often hurts. It is often filled with less-than-joyful moments. It is not about walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards; that lasts only a moment even for movie stars.

But life is worthwhile, and living it well and honorably is worthwhile.

Maybe we do need a Living Life Well and Honorably for Dummies.

Actually, I think we already have it, and it’s been around since Roman times.

This month, we’ve been reading Die Empty over at The High Calling. Today concludes the discussion with a focus on the last three chapters of the book. To see what others have to say, please visit The High Calling.

Photograph by Piotr Seidlecki via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Book Stores

The news first arrived as an email, asking for help. The Book House, a fixture in our local community for more than 30 years, had been notified that its building was to be torn down.

The building is an 1863 farmhouse. It’s to be torn down with nearby structures to provide the space needed for a storage facility.

The officials in the neighboring community where The Book House is located are not known for their devotion to history or historical legacy. An old 19^th century stone church recently stood in the way of a new gas station. A win-win scenario was created – the gas station developer removed the church (stone by stone) for it to be rebuilt at a winery in a rural area. Instead, the bricks were unceremoniously dumped on the property and pillaged by people looking for stones for paving, their gardens, and who knows what else. The church is gone forever.

The new developer says he’s trying to work with The Book House, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The municipality calls the bookstore an institution. Well, so was the church.

I have a strong personal connection to this particular book store. I’ve been a regular customer since 1986. And it’s the location of the poetry alcove I wrote about for Tweetspeak Poetry.

The book House is notable for another reason than the old building it resides in. In a time where small bookstores are rapidly disappearing, even used bookstores, The Book House has not only survived but has managed to hold its own against the chain stores and even Amazon.

It’s a used bookstore that expanded into new books that expanded into selling books online. On the premises are 200,000 books. In the warehouse are another 80,000 books. Available online are yet another 80,000 books.

Barnes and Noble is ailing, and the prognosis doesn’t look good. In St. Louis, Borders is gone. The Kirkwood Bookstore is long gone. So is Pudd’n’Head Books, Successful Life bookstore, One Way Bookstore, Paul’s Books, The Library Ltd., Brentano’s, B. Dalton’s, Waldenbooks, and several used bookstores. We’re down to Barnes and Noble, a few small bookshops, and Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club.

I’m partially responsible for this state of affairs. Most of the books I buy today are from Amazon. I’m not attracted by the price. I am attracted by the convenience and the huge selection that is likely to have anything I am looking for. Those are the benefits. (I pay a use tax on internet purchases, so there’s no tax benefit involved here.)

There’s also a cost. To buy a book on Amazon is to miss the smell and feel of a bookstore, the chance discovery of a new book by an author you love, or to be captured by a new title or an old one. When I was in Barnes and Noble recently, looking for a gift, I walked out with the gift, but I also walked out with new books by Jaroslav Pelikan and Peter Ackroyd that I didn’t know had been published. I just happened to see the books in the “new history titles” shelf. Despite knowing my purchase history, Amazon would not have recommended these books when I came to the site.

The book publishing business is staying in upheaval. We’ve all been waiting for it to finally calm down, but that’s not likely to happen. The industry is going to stay in upheaval, largely thanks to technology. Many bookstores will not be able to survive, but others (like the Book House) will be able to figure out how to find a way to compete. Amazon has set its sites on the publishing part of the industry, and where that will lead is anyone’s guess.

In the meantime, The Book House in its small iconic building will likely have to look for a new home – or perhaps a new lot, if the developer is sincere about paying the building’s moving costs. The shop probably couldn’t sustain the moving costs and still remain profitable.

The developer has the right to do what he wants with his property. But a storage facility? Sheesh. 

There is an online petition asking the municipality to stop. I signed it. We spend a lot of money at restuarants there.

The bookstore has been given its 90-day eviction notice.

Photograph: The Book House. The gabled area above the porch is the poetry alcove.

What I’m Learning about Book Publishing

Since June, I’ve been working with a personal trainer on core conditioning and general physical strengthening,  with a nice leavening of cardio work thrown in for good measure. On Monday, while I’m grunting and groaning with routines like “dead bugs” and “bear crawls,” He told me his grandmother was reading Dancing Priest, and couldn’t put it down. “She’s raving about what a great story it is,” he said.

Of course, I agreed.

Yesterday, as I’m staggering around trying to recover from TRX hamstring curls, “mountain climbing,” and more bear crawls with an eight-pound ball on my back, he told me his grandmother had finished it and was telling all her friends about it.

“When’s the next one coming out?” he asked.

“The day after Thanksgiving,” I said. “It’s out.” I told him he could get A Light Shining at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or could even call Barnes & Noble or small bookstores locally and order it. “If enough people call asking for it,” I said, “bookstores are much more likely to stock it in the stores, that is, if they’re still around next week.”

I’m learning about the book publishing, book marketing, and the book retail business. The industry is going through convulsions, and there’s no sign of settling down any time soon. Two local bookstores closed recently in St. Louis; the fact is that a small bookstore, the kind so many of us grew up with, simply can’t compete with an Amazon. The ones who are still trying to be general bookstores are going out of business; the ones finding specific niches are hanging on, at least for now. (One of the ones going out of business in St. Louis actually stocked Dancing Priest for a time.)

None of us likes change. When it comes to books, we like to think it’s still the era of Maxwell Perkins editing the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe at Scribner’s. Perkins died in 1947. The industry he knew continued on for another 25 years or so, and then disappeared forever. (If you want to read an excellent biography of Perkins, try Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg. It was originally published in 1979 and reissued in 2008.)

A statement of the obvious: Amazon is blowing the industry wide open. Not only has it upended the retail industry, it’s now moving into publishing in a major way. Want to guess why so many traditional publishers tried to establish prices of e-books with Apple? (And got into trouble with the Justice Department as a result?) The answer is a six-letter word that’s the name of a river in South America.

Amazon is a huge factor, but it’s not the only agent for change. Technology is upending the book industry, too. Print-on-demand printers essentially mean anyone can publish, for any length of time, a paperback book. E-books are starting to dominate adult fiction. Self-publishing is exploding. Did you know that even blockbuster bestselling author Jackie Collins is experimenting with self-publishing? Old forms of publication are new again, like serial publication – it worked for Dickens in the 19^th century and it looks like it might be working again today. All kinds of digital magazines are promoting fiction, short stories, poetry, and “creative non-fiction.”

There are even publishers like Diversion Books that work like a traditional publisher with one exception – they handle only digital books.

The single most overused word in the book industry now is “platform,” as in, an author has to have one. Experts point to social media – go ye therefore and subdue Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. Millions of writers are chasing millions of potential readers on social media to prove to publishers they have what it takes to sell books and make money.

If you’re a new writer, no matter who you’re publisher is, you’re going to be largely on your own. It’s a fact of life today in the book business. Yes, I know, I want to spend all my time writing, too, but that simply won’t work any more if you expect to be published and read. You’re going to be largely responsible for your own marketing and promotion, even if you have a traditional publisher.

One thing to always remember: It’s all coming apart, yes. But that is often the absolute best time to throw yourself into something and see what opportunities are there. And the opportunities are there.