Fifteen years ago I was sitting in my room at the David Library of the American Revolution in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania and I wrote my first blog post at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. I had just published The […]
Archives for June 2023
The Author’s Corner with Richard N. Langlois
Richard N. Langlois is Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut. This interview is based on his new book, The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise (Princeton University Press, 2023). JF: What led you […]
Junk Wax?
Baseball cards reveal a timely truth: innocence endures
History News Network: updated
Since this post first went live on the morning of 06/23, I have received additional information that is much more encouraging than what was communicated originally. Thus I am updating this post with the welcome news that efforts to re-home […]
The Author’s Corner with Sarah Naramore
Sarah Naramore is Assistant Professor of History at Northwest Missouri State University. This interview is based on her new book, Benjamin Rush, Civic Health, and Human Illness in the Early American Republic (University of Rochester Press, 2023). JF: What led […]
Evangelical roundup for June 22, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Peter Wehner continues to go after evangelicals for supporting Trump. European evangelicals meet to learn more about Roman Catholicism. The Church of God gathers for its annual convention. The Council for Christian Colleges & […]
Oh the Places We Went: The Playground Crawl
It’s an epic in the making
The Unexpected Complications of the Abortion Debate
Review: Roe: The History of a National Obsession by Mary Ziegler. Yale University Press, 2023. 248 pp., $27.00 The first time I heard Mary Ziegler present her scholarship on abortion was more than a decade ago, before she had published […]
The Protestant roots of “wokeness”
Harper’s Magazine is running a piece by Ian Buruma, the former editor of The New York Review of Books (read the article to learn why he is no longer the editor), titled, “Doing the Work: The Protestant ethic and the […]
The Author’s Corner with Matthew J. Clavin
Matthew J. Clavin is Professor of American and Atlantic History at the University of Houston. This interview is based on his new book, Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War (NYU Press, 2023). JF: What led you to […]
LONG FORM: An Indigenous Rights Reformer in the Age of “Manifest Destiny”
Isabel Crawford—a deaf Baptist missionary to the Kiowa—practiced a more excellent way
Ideas in progress: David O’Hara on interdisciplinary humanities, sustainability, and bees
Social media can be depressing, but as Andrea Turpin reminded a while back, having a secret list of “Deeply Good People” can be a helpful way to bring to the fore the encouraging content. And some of the most encouraging […]
Just how unprecedented was Trump’s federal indictment?
Donald Trump is the first president or former president to face a federal indictment, but as Joshua Zeitz points out at Politico, a sitting vice-president and the president of the Confederacy faced treason charges. Here is a taste of Zeitz’s […]
Seattle Pacific University will make huge cuts to its academic budget
Another Christian college is in financial trouble. Here is Nina Shapiro at The Seattle Times: Seattle Pacific University is cutting its budget for academic programs by 40% — mostly through steep faculty layoffs, effective in a year. The announcement by […]
The Atlantic tackles Seven Mountain Dominionism
A nice piece of reporting here by Stephanie McCrummen. Here is a taste of “The Woman Who Bought a Mountain For God”: On the day she heard God tell her to buy a mountain, Tami Barthen already sensed that her life […]
One piece of culture that defines America
The New York Times asked its columnists to pick one piece of culture that “captures the true spirit of our country.” Here is what they came up with: Ezra Klein: “Her” Maureen Dowd: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” Ross Douthat: […]
Why do we long for a golden age?
Is the United States in the midst of a moral breakdown? Should we support candidates who want to take us back to a golden age? Why do we want to “Make America Great Again” (Trump) or believe that “America is […]
The Author’s Corner with Bonnie Hagerman
Bonnie Hagerman is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and Director of the Department’s Undergraduate Programs at the University of Virginia. This interview is based on her new book, Skimpy Coverage: Sports Illustrated and the Shaping of the Female […]
The Wanting of What May Be Lost
Wendell Berry’s agrarian vision and the life of a pediatric surgeon
Dictators R Us
It’s been a good PR spring and summer for dictators, old and new. Earlier in the spring, an article in the American Conservative waxed poetically over Vlad the Impaler’s leadership lessons for the rest of us. Some conservatives, in the […]