Saturday Good Reads – March 14, 2026

Forty years ago, I was taking a course called “The Nature of Story,” and one of the books we read was Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. Only 10 years old at the time, it was deservedly already a classic, and it would eventually be made into a movie with Brad Pitt, Tom Skerrit and Brenda Blethyn (who became Vera the detective on PBS Masterpiece Mystery).  The novel has just turned 50 years old, and Brandon McNeice at Front Porch Republic has a reflection. 

You may not know the name Philo Farnsworth, but he invented what was likely the most influential technology of the 20^th century – the television. In 1921, when he was 14 years old, he realized how images might be transmitted through electric current. And the rest, as they say, is history. Jason Clark at This Is the Day has a retrospective.

 

At Mere Orthodoxy, Nadya Williams interviews Mark Graham about his new book. The subject – the history of Christianity told in 30 key moments. 

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Atlas of Independence: John Adams and the American Revolution by Chris Mackowski – review by Kelsey DeFord at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Have You Seen the First Declaration? – Michael Auslin at Patowmack Packet.

 

Pontiac, taxes and mobs: The American colonists battle Parliament – Keli Holt.

 

The Siege of Boston, General Washington, and Phillis Wheatley – Patrick Hastings at Library of Congress Blog.

 

Isaiah Thomas and the Declaration of Independence – Sherman Lohnes at the Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Glories of Small Towns – K.E. Colombini at Front Porch Republic.

 

George Washington’s Warning About Religion Still Matters – Andrew Fowler at Real Clear Religion.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Misfits and Moral Injury: Why Shusaku Endo Matters Today – Brian Volck at Church Life Journal.

 

Wrestling Coach Bets on Tolstoy and Dante to Save the Classics – and Young Men – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Life and Culture

 

Science Has a Big Fraud Problem – Joe Nocera at The Free Press.

 

The Celtic Mind: How Adam Smith and Edmund Burke Saved Western Civilization – Bradley Birzer.

 

Iran

 

Two Days Over Iran – Michael Smith at Unlicensed Punditry.

 

Who’s That Source? Iran Edition – Jillian Butler at Racket News.

 

The Blood Libel Comes to Iran – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

Jeffrey Sachs Is Trying to Fix The New York Times’ Coverage, One Email at a Time – Emily Kopp at Racket News.

 

Iran Can’t Hold the World Hostage – Matthew Continetti at The Wall Street Journal (unlocked).

 

Faith

 

All the Stars We Never See – Even Patrohay at Front Porch Republic.

 

American Stuff

 

Framing History: ‘I could not die in a cause more sacred’ – Melissa Winn at Emerging Civil War.

 

Poetry

 

“Two Sewing,” poem by Hazel Hall – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Learning by Poetry: Dans la Nuit – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“The Homestead,” poem by Joseph Bottum – A.M. Juster and Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

I’m With You – Mari Frangoulis

Painting: Woman with Romance Novel, oil on canvas by Johann Baptist Reiter (1813-1890).

Mr. Bates v. the Post Office

For the last four Sundays, we’ve been watching Mr. Bates v. the Post Office on PBS, starring British actor Toby Jones as Alan Bates. It’s a four-part dramatization by ITV of the true story of what happened when the British Post Office adopted a computerized accounting system called Horizon. Developed by Fujitsu, Horizon was supposed to be a significant cost savings and huge increase in efficiency. 

That’s not what happened. Horizon was also full of bugs and glitches. The way the bugs worked, it looked like the subpostmasters – the people operating the postal stores on all the High Streets in Britain – were stealing money. The system kept identifying shortfalls.

 

Frustrated subpostmasters would call the Help Line, to be told they were the only ones reporting a problem. The Post Office sided completely with Fujitsu. And the subpostmasters were expected to reimburse the post office for the shortfalls. Because the Post Office, a government monopoly, had the legal authority to conduct its own criminal investigations and court proceedings, it took people to court. More than 900 people were convicted, in fact. More than 2,750 others paid from their own savings. 

 

Some went to prison. Some killed themselves. People’s lives and reputations were ruined. And it was all because Fujitsu wouldn’t acknowledge the program’s errors, and post office executives supported Fujitsu. Even when they all knew better.

One man, Alan Bates, a subpostmaster in Wales, took the system on – and wouldn’t let go. It took 20 years, but eventually the courts recognized “the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.” The saga continues; court judgments against former defendants are being appealed and vacated. Parliament is holding hearings. And the British Government has to answer the uncomfortable question of what responsibility it has. 

 

The Post Office’s CEO from 2012 to 2019, Paula Vennels, stoutly maintained that the Horizon system s robust.” Her husband advised against using “emotive” words like “bugs.” She knew that Horizon had problems, and ignored her own management who urged that the prosecutions stop. She was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) when she retired in 2019. 

 

The ITV program, which aired in January in Britain, created a huge wave of outrage. Within days, a million people had signed an online petition that she be stripped of her CBE honor. King Charles didn’t wait. He ordered it returned for “bringing the honours system into disrepute.”

 

Paula Vennels also happens to be a priest in the Church of England.

 

PBS is airing a one-hour documentary on the scandal. There will be no second series of the dramatization; the producers said it’s time for the documentaries to take over.

 

Fujitsu has a statement posted from the home page of its web site.

 

The dramatization may be one of the most horrifying things I’ve watched on PBS. Each episode starts with the words “This is a true story.” It shows what happens when a government agency – a government monopoly – is give too much power and becomes too arrogant to acknowledge it’s made a mistake. Instead, it keeps compounding the mistakes. 

 

And lives were destroyed. 

 

Top photograph by Johnny Briggs via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Life and Land in Anglo-Saxon England – Eleanor Parker at History Today.

 

Bird in hand – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” poem by John Crowe Ransom – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Among the missing, among the dead: black poetry in America – William Logan at New Criterion. 

"Ticking Clock" by Ira Rosen

The media training industry – the companies and consultants with train people to be interviewed – owes its creation to one man and one television program – Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes. Having been through media training many times, I learned what it was like to face the camera and a hostile interviewer. 

Except for a brief stint with ABC Primetime, Ira Rosen spent almost three decades working as a producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes. He worked on a host of famous stories. He worked closely with Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, Lesley Stahl, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Diane Sawyer, Chris Wallace, and other famous correspondents. He worked with many of their famous subjects – politicians, movie stars, gangsters, authors, dictators, He also experienced the stories that got away.

 

Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes is Rosen’s memoir of those years with CBS and ABC. It makes for both surprising and not-so-surprising reading. Most of these news broadcasting legends are gone now, but they helped to shape the world we live in today. And Rosen’s story is as much as about the foibles and vanity of the big TV news names as it is about the stories they covered and won prizes for. 

 

Ira Rosen

We know everyone is flawed. We know ego can play a role in people’s lives and attitudes. But it’s still disappointing to read to what degree so many of these news people were motivated by ego and ambition, and how little “news” might play a role. And it has to do with money. For a long, long time, 60 Minutes was the major moneymaker for CBS. The correspondents often behaved like the celebrities they interviewed, and sometimes behaved like the more notorious. Rosen doesn’t seem at all surprised at the rise of the “me-too” charges that seemed to grow like topsy at top television networks – the conditions had been laid years before.

 

It’s Mike Wallace, the 60 Minutes star whom Rosen worked with the longest and the most closely, who comes in for particular focus. Wallace was not a pleasant man, either personally or professionally. He could behave brutally, even to his own children. As he aged, his behavior didn’t mellow; if anything, it became worse. He was finally pushed out the door after crossing the wrong boss and thinking he could get away with it.

 

The descriptions of the good, the bad, and the ugly are balanced by Rosen’s love of his work. And he received numerous Emmy Awards, DuPont Awards, Robert F. Kennedy Awards, and a Peabody for that work. Even before he was hired by 60 Minutes, he was writing award-winning stories about the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island for Rolling Stone. And he knew that to get the real story, he had to ignore the official press conferences and go hang out with the plant workers at the bar after shift-change. He co-authored The Warning: The Accident at Three Mile Island.

 

Ticking Clock is an important book for understanding American journalism from 1980 to 2015. It describes how major television news magazines functioned, and both the working and the dysfunction of the major people involved. It’s an important story, but a story tinged with sadness. And then you wonder if the stories themselves required these kinds of personalities to tell them.

Deconstructing the Culture

I watch very little television – virtually nothing on network TV, except for one or two shows on PBS (Call the Midwife! and Masterpiece Mystery). And I watch virtually nothing on cable, so I’ve missed out on all the hoopla over Duck Dynasty and Iron Chef.

My reasons are various – time, little that I find interesting, too much network programming given over to political correctness and agendas. I haven’t disengaged from TV culture, but I do keep it minimal.

But even with what I do watch, and beyond television, what I read and view online, I do something that suggests a larger confinement and disengagement from popular culture. I deconstruct what I watch, what I read and what I see.

Deconstructionism is a term and literary process originally popularized by post-modern academics like Jacque Derrida. The text is everything, and everything is a text – you have to closely examine each text, take it apart, and see what it says about such things as power relationships.

I use the term much more loosely – I “deconstruct” texts, movies, programs and other aspects of the culture by asking certain questions. (If it sounds complicated, it’s not; once you start it becomes like second nature).

Instead of “deconstructing,” what I do is closer akin to “filtering the bull.”

I’ll consider a TV show, a magazine article, a movie, a book (especially non-fiction), a review, a political ad, a statement by a politician, a company or an organization – and ask myself a few questions.

What’s the point? What are they trying to communicate?

Are “agenda statements’ slipping in disguised as something else?

What isn’t be said? What’s being left out?

Could it be better said another way?

Is this only entertainment, or is it something else?

What aspects of my own prejudices or worldview does this appeal to or offend?

We have a movie reviewer for a local newspaper who prefers R-rated, and often violence-filled, movies. He panned the movies “Lincoln” and “Les Miserables.” He’d prefer a movie like “Pulp Fiction.” So we’ve learned to see his reviews as some kind of personal agenda-setting, and not simply his view of what movies should be.

Political ads are easier to deconstruct. Generally, I avoid them. I’m appalled by “advertising by assassination. My philosophy of voting is that a candidate is only as good as the worst attack ad he or she authorizes.

Even the church isn’t free from cultural influences, say Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold in The Life of the Body. Music, teaching and preaching are all subject to influence by the culture. The issue of “worship wars” has been with us for some time.

This doesn’t mean that culture permeates the church, and there’s no recourse other than everyone sitting there accepting it or going to war over it. Not all cultural influences are bad. Not all influences can be escaped.

But we are surrounded by the culture; we intellectually bathe in it every day. But once we’re aware, can learn how to discern and understand what is happening in the culture, especially in the entertainment media.

Led by Laura Boggess, we discussing The Life of the Body over at The High Calling. Today, Duane Scott takes up the third section of the book – with a focus on what the culture tells us our bodies should look like.

Photograph by X posid via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Television Becomes Poetry Becomes Speech

A curious combination of television and poetry helped change and industry.

I was having trouble finishing a speech. And it wasn't just any speech but a rather significant departure for the company. It would have one of two outcomes. Either the chemical company executive giving it would “elect to pursue career opportunities elsewhere” (companies rarely “fire” senior executives), or the speech would change the company and the industry forever.

A lot was riding on this speech. And I was having trouble finishing it. I had tried a dozen different endings, and nothing seemed to work.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Petr Ktraochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Ancient History Lesson

For a large part of my career, I was a corporate speechwriter. A word guy. I would often eat, drink, and sleep the printed word. People who knew me as a child weren’t surprised to learn that I end up making a living with words. I was the family reader. I loved books. There was never a time when I didn’t have too many books.

I was not quite 33 when I got my first desktop computer at work – an IBM 384. I was fascinated as the IT guy set it up, and he was so amused by my interest that he showed me (and no one else in our department) how to type in the command for it to play music that was programmed into it.

Email began arriving in the early 1990s, and by 1993 our company had hit critical mass with the number of people with access. I started an email newsletter on company news – simple text, no images or graphics. Within three weeks, the newsletter had gone viral, saturating the entire system and even being sent by sales people and researchers to customers and academic partners outside the company.

Form there, I graduated to programming a “magazine” on a disk and then to leading the project to create the company’s first web site.

This sound so, well, rather ancient and quaint today, but then it was exciting, cutting edge stuff. Even Microsoft took note of what we had done with the company’s web site.

What I didn’t understand was why this was all so appealing to me, the printed word guy, the book guy. I was grappling with the implications of where this digital stuff was taking me (and the company), but I was genuinely puzzled by my attraction to it. That is, until I read a rather academic book called Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word  by Walter Ong.

Ong was a Jesuit priest teaching at St. Louis University (he has since died). Essentially, his argument was that the digital revolution was actually harking back to the oral culture replaced by Gutenberg and his printing press in the 1400s. Image and feeling (emotion) was becoming more important, propelled first by television and then by the computer and the internet. In fact, the digital world was a kind of “secondary orality.”

It all clicked into place. I was a speechwriter – writing in one medium (the printed page) for communication in another medium (speech) for understanding via a third medium (the ear and then the mind). I was also largely working in an “oral” field when the digital revolution and its “secondary orality” arrived.

It all made sense. What also made sense was that digital technology – like any other communication medium – is not “neutral.” We think it’s all about content, and we are dead wrong. Content is important, but the form the content is packaged in is also a communication vehicle, with its; own assumptions, priorities and biases.

All of this was brought to mind this week as I was reading The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion by Tim Challies. I bought the book about the same time I started The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges, which Challies is leading a discussion of at his blog, Informing the Reforming.

In The Next Story, Challies provides an concise history of communication technology (the revolution really started with the railroad and the telegraph) as he leads up to an extended discussion on how all this affects our faith. He says that television, for example, “has taken us from a culture that learned from print, was entertained by print, was persuaded by print, and trusted print to a culture that now relies on the image. It has changed our perception of ourselves and our understanding of the world around us. Television represents more than flickering images on a screen. It gives us a new identity. A new ideology. A new idolatry.”

I cannot remember a time of not having a television (the first one I recall was a square boxy-looking thing on four wooden legs). My children cannot remember a time of not having a computer in the house. My two-and-a-half-year-old grandson is already adept at using the iPad.

As Challies says, technology changes us. It’s no coincidence that the rise of television coincided with the rise of youth culture and the emphasis on youth. Television also emphasized the hear-and-now at the expense of history. We are very arrogant toward history these days, believing anything older than 15 minutes probably isn’t worth very much.

And why do people on Twitter say things they would never dream of saying in person? Because of the perception that Twitter and other social media are game changers, and can empower the so-called powerless. Social media can also be a form of tyranny.

I was going to review The Next Story and be done with it, but I may have two or three posts about it. What Challies has to say about the impact of technology on faith is important.

Related: A blog post I wrote in 2009 – Social Media and Me