Saturday Good Reads - July 19, 2025

We lived through the most recent inflationary period (2021-date), which so far can’t even begin to hold a candle to the 1970s (mortgage rates of 14 percent, a prime rate of 20 percent, and inflation averaging 11 and 12 percent a year). Some LatinAmerican countries have a history of inflationary periods. The most famous inflation period may be that of Weimar Germany, which helped the rise of one Adolf Hitler. But inflation is not a new phenomenon in America; in fact, it nearly upended the American Revolution.  

Pastor and theologian John MacArthur died recently t age 86. I’ve read some moving tributes to the man, and I’ve seen some pretty ugly stuff on social media, all from the progressive side of Christianity. I prefer to stick with the moving tributes. One is by the well-known theologian John Piper; another is by someone less famous, a writer named Samiel Sey.

 

Former U.S. Senator and Confederate president Jefferson David and his brother owned plantations on the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg. During the Civil War, the land was occupied by Federal troops. Ownership of the land eventually passed to the Montgomery family, former slaves owned by the Davis family. 

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Beeline March Began 250 Years Ago – Kevin Pawlak at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Alexander Hamilton, American Patriot – Miguel Faria at Real Clear History.

 

Wrong About King George III – William Allen at Coolidge Review.

 

Major John Van Dyk and the Bones of Major John Andre: Part III – Jeffrey Collin Wilford at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Faith

 

The Genius of American Christianity – Peter Leithart at First Things.

 

Take a Closer Look at Noah’s Ark – Peter Lee at The Gospel Coalition.

 

The Holy City – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song,

 

Art

 

A pioneer in paint: On “Eugene Boudin, Father of Impressionism” – David Platzer at The New Criterion.

 

Life and Culture

 

How to Save Higher Ed – And End the Serial Abuse of American Taxpayers – Christopher Rufo at The Free Press.

 

Building on the Heights – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

American Stuff

 

Locating the Real “Pickett’s Charge” – Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory.

 

Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865 – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Civil War.

 

Poetry

 

“The Tyger” by William Blake – The Rabbit Room.

 

“Calumny” by Francs Sargent Osgood – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Midsummer Prayer – David Whyte.

 

“On the Death of Richard West,” poem by Thomas Gray – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Why Are So Many Bestsellers Mysteries? – Emma Jameson at Spellbound Mystery Magazine.

 

The Path, read by Alfred Nicol

Painting: Reading, oil on canvas (1930) by August Roeseler (1866-1934).

The judgment

After John 9 

He said it

plainly; he 

explained it,

succinctly. 

The reason

he came was 

judgment, that 

those who are 

blind can see, 

and those who

see may become 

blind. Guilt may be 

taken away, or 

guilt may remain.

It’s your choice.

 

Photograph by Manuel Bonadeo via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Invocation Before the Reading of Scripture by Gregory of Nazianzus – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Of Furniture and Formation – C. Ben Mitchell at Front Porch Republic.

 

Living Wisely in a Digital World – Maree at IndiAanya.

 

The church I led closed a year ago. I’m still not over it – Ryan Burge at Deseret News. 

 

 

Poets and Poems: Andrea Potos and “Two Emilys”

Emily Bronte (1818-1848) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) had more in common than their first names. Bronte published her classic Wuthering Heights under the pen name of Ellis Acton; Dickinson was little known, publishing only one letter and only 10 poems in her lifetime. Both became famous under their own names after they died. They lived in a time when women writers were not freely published.  

Poet Andrea Potos knows the work of both writers, and in her new poetry collections, Two Emilys, she pays tribute to them. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Sherborne Missal Chaffinch – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“The Maldive Shark,” poem by Herman Melville – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Kingdom of Tales – poem by Selah Cross at Story Warren.

 

Italy’s sunken city returning from the sea – Eva Sandoval at BBC.

 

The enduring brilliance of C.S. Lewis – Alexander Larman at The Spectator.

Three Fictional Encounters in Three Factual Events

In my novel Brookhaven, the teenaged Sam McClure has three fateful encounters with John Haygood. The three happen in successive years, and each of the three involve Civil War military operations. 

I was reminded of this when Emerging Civil War posted articles on two of the three operations a week apart this month.

 

The first encounter happens during Grierson’s Raid, an operation ordered by Ulysses S. Grant to distract the Confederates during his siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Some 1,700 Union cavalrymen rode through Mississippi, starting at the Tennessee border and finishing in Union-occupied Louisiana. They tore up railroad track and caused considerable havoc, but more importantly, they kept the Confederates focused away from Grant transferring his army across the river to besiege Vicksburg from the east.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Illustration: Major Benjamin Grierson and his cavalry make a triumphant entry into Union-controlled Baton Rouge at the conclusion of their famous raid through Mississippi in 1863. (Library of Congress)

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Why Governments Cannot Educate – Joseph Woodard at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

How Do You Fix Schools? Teachers Union Says Stop Trump, ICE, and Fascism – Maya Sulkin at The Free Press.

 

C.S. Lewis and Ray Bradbury: Legitimizing Science Fiction – Bradley Birzer,

 

Just War Thery and the American Civil War – Ed Lowe at Emerging Civil War.

 

Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861-1865 by Damian Shiels – review at Civil War Books and Authors.

"A Soldier and a Poet" by Avraham Stern

Avraham Stern (1907-1942) published only nine of his 40 poems in his lifetime, but he became one of his country’s most famous poets. 

Stern was born in Poland when it was part of the Russian Empie. He was attracted to and became part of the revolutionary culture that had been developing in Russia since the 19^th century but burst into bloom during the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Russian Civil War. He traveled to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1925 and attended Hebrew University, enrolling in Greek and Latin Studies. He began to write poetry, reportedly scribbling his verses in the back of a barbershop.

 

Then came the Arab Riots of 1929. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

A Place to Stand: On Reading Poetry – Rachel Welcher at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

On a Train Through Murray Country at Sunset – Lucas Smith as The Sprawl of Quality. 

 

Goethe’s Grief: This is Goethe’s Experience. And Mine – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

“Vesper” and “Heard in a Shell” – poems by Martin Briggs at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Requiescat,” poem by Oscar Wilde – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

White Blouse – poem by Dave Malone at Every Day Poems.

"The Paxton's Tower Murders" by Stephen Puleston

It’s DI Caren Waits first day on the job at the West Wales Police Service. She wants to make a good impression, but the first thing that greets her is a murder investigation.  

A drug dealer is founded dead at the foot of Paxton’s Tower, an abandoned structure known for its spectacular seacoast views and notoriety for being a drug distribution site. It’s a death with few clues, no witnesses, and leads that have to be eked out. One thing it does have is controversy – a local anti-drug activist is soon organizing public meetings to claim the police aren’t doing their job and could be doing far more.

 

Waits worked for DI John Drake in the North Wales Police Force, and she sticks to procedure and protocol. She’s determined to solve the murder. But then a second murder in the same place puts the investigation – and the protests – on steroids.

 

Stephen Puleston

Despite her newness to the job, Waits demonstrates intelligence, experience, and grit. She’s a single parent, with her husband having been killed in an automobile accident a year before, although there’s some murkiness about both the husband and the death that promises new twists in the future. 

 

The Paxton’s Tower Murders is the first is the new DI Caren Waits crime series by Welsh writer Stephen Puleston. It’s an auspicious, well-plotted story for beginning a series. (And a second novel in the series is due to be published in a few days.) It’s part of Puleston’s writing style to develop the story so that the reader always knows what’s going in the narrative and the characters’ minds.

 

Puleston publishes three series of Welsh police detective stories. Detective Inspector Ian Drake is with the North Wales Police Service, Detective Inspector John Marco is with the South Wales Police Service, and now Detective Inspector Caren Waits is with the West Wales Police Service. The author originally trained and practiced as a; solicitor/lawyer. He also attended the University of London. He lives in Wales, very close to where his fictional heroes live and work.

 

Related:

 

My review of Written in Blood.

 

My review of A Time to Kill.

 

My review of Another Good Killing.

 

My review of Brass in Pocket.

 

My review of Worse than Dead.

 

My review of Against the Tide.

 

My review of Devil’s Kitchen.

 

My review of Dead Smart.

 

My review of Speechless.

 

My review of A Cold Dark Heart.

 

My review of A Cold Dark Heart.

 

My review of Dead and Gone by Stephen Puleston.

 

My review of Time to Die by Stephen Puleston.

 

My review of Stone Cold Dead by Stephen Puleston.

 

My review of Looking Good Dead by Stephen Puleston.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The World is in Love with America – Chris Arnade at The Free Press.

 

Kurt Vonnegut’s Ambivalent War on AI – Hoel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

Magazine.

 

Does Nick Clegg believe in original sin? – The Critic Magazine.

Second verse same as the first

After John 9 

Disbelieving that a man

born blind could now see

(healed on the Sabbath, 

no less), they return

to their original questions:

was it him or his parents?

Who sinned? The parents

dodge an answer while

the man himself says

the obvious: I was blind,

and now I see; that’s all

I know. I can’t explain it.

I can’t give you the answer

you want, the narrative

you so desperately want

to maintain. Do you want

the answer that reinforces

your own bias and blindness,

or do you want truth?

 

Photograph by Amir Geshani via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Flashback: What a Wonder Is a Human Being – Tim Challies.

 

Highly Online Missionaries? The Dangers of Digital Escapism – Jonathan Moe at Desiring God.

 

The Uncommon Power of Common Things – Kinley Bowers at Cogitare Magazine.